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I looked on the documentation for google big query data types, checking the differences between TimeStamp to Datetime data types.

As I understand the main difference is:

Unlike Timestamps, a DATETIME object does not refer to an absolute instance in time. Instead, it is the civil time, or the time that a user would see on a watch or calendar.

So when should I use Timestamp/Datetime?

Thanks

NirKa
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1 Answers1

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In most cases you will want to use the timestamp data type. It refers to an absolute point in time. BigQuery interprets any timezone information and represents the time internally as a UTC timestamp.

Very rarely would you use a datetime data type, which is a date and a time but no time zone. The example I like to give is that you'd use a datetime to represent pi day, 2017, since it occurs at 2017-03-14 15:09:26.535898 in each time zone separately.

Tim Swast
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