How to use the SQL server clock in a LINQ query

Question

I'm writing an app which has a "check in" facility - essentially a system tray app that checks in every 20 seconds by writing to a SQL db.

I then have a second app that checks this table to see if the client has checked in, and performs an action if the client has not checked in for 60 seconds.

I need to ensure that the time written to the sql database is the local server time, not the client time - as otherwise I'll have synchronisation issues.

I'm using Linq-to-SQL - how can I acheive this?

Answer 1

Actually as a general rule of thumb you should not use the local time of the server either - use UTC time (Coordinated Universal Time) instead.

In Linq to Sql you can use SqlFunctions.GetUtcDate() for this which maps to GETUTCDATE() in SQL Server.

Answer 2

Write a user defined function that returns GetDate() and add it to you dbml file