Here's one more or less for perfection's sake.
Microsoft SQL Server only contains the field type datetime for storing dates and times.
But let's say that I want to store a list of business hours, where the date is completely irrelevant. Currently I'm using the datetime type and then simply displaying the time-portion of the data. But I have two problems with this.
- It seems awkwardly inefficient.
- It may confuse future developers to see a full-blown date coming along with the time, which they may not know whether is used anywhere or not.
And so it begs the question; in the absence of a specific time field (like in MySQL), what is the most optimal way of storing only a particular time of day, from 00:00 to 23:59?
UPDATE: It's SQL Server 2005. (Also I'd just be interested in knowing what to do in general when there is no time type.)