To answer kiran's question:
I will argue that the using the built-in DateToString() function as suggested by Craig and myself will be faster than the other options that have been mentioned. Here's why:
1) The column in question is a date datatype and is stored internally in a binary format.
2) The DateToString() function will convert the internal date format directly to a string using either the supplied format string or the installation default format string if not given a format.
3) The other suggestions, while they should work, all use functions which require string inputs. This will force the compiler to convert the date to a temporary string before applying the suggested functions, adding overhead as compared to simply allowing DateToString() to do the conversion itself. Besides, all of these options require that the default date format string be of the appropriate format to meet the final format requirement.
An easy way for you to see what is happening internally is to create a transformer which performs all of the suggested conversions, compile the job and look at the transformer source in the appropriate RT_SC# directory (*.trx files). It should be pretty obvious from the source which will be the most efficient.
*Edit* I will add this statement as a cop out
: Compiler optimizations may invalidate the above statements as far as final efficiency is concerned...I did not take optimizations into account. You may want to consider which option is more readable or maintainable in your situation.
Regards,
