Change web server log timestamp to SQLServer timestamp

Question

The format of a log entry in Apache web log is
[10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700]
Is there a more elegant way to convert this string into an SQL Server datetime than this:
declare @ts char(28);
set @ts = '[10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700]';
select dateadd(hour,
convert(int, substring(@ts,22,3)),
convert(datetime2(0),
substring(@ts,2,11)+' '+
substring(@ts,14,8)+':000',
113) ) ;

Answer 1

Hi LauriP,
If all the timestamps are in that fixed format, the most elegant way is to  concatenate the known length datepart and timepart and cast the concatenated string to a DATE type.
declare @ts char(28);
set @ts = '[10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700]';
SELECT CAST(SUBSTRING(@ts,2,11)+' '+SUBSTRING(@ts,14,8) AS DATETIME2(0))--OR
SELECT CAST(SUBSTRING(@ts,2,CHARINDEX(':',@ts)-2)+' '+SUBSTRING(@ts,CHARINDEX(':',@ts)+1,8) AS DATETIME2(0))
If you have any question, feel free to let me know.
Eric Zhang
TechNet Community Support