The GETDATE function is used to retrieve the current database system time in SQL Server. Its syntax is

GETDATE( )

GETDATE does not require any argument.

Example: The SQL statement

SELECT GETDATE( );

yields the following result:

'2000-03-15 00:05:02.123'

GETDATE function is most useful when we need to record the time a particular transaction happens. In SQL Server, we simply insert the value of the GETDATE( ) function into the table to achieve this. We can also set the default value of a column to be GETDATE( ) to achieve the same purpose.

The Oracle and MySQL equivalent of GETDATE is SYSDATE.