ASP.NET, SQL Server, LINQTOSQL and Date formats

Question

I am setting the locale of my .net application via:

 string userLocale = Web.Helpers.LocaleHelpers.GetBestRFC3066Locale(this.Context.Request.UserLanguages);

            if (userLocale != String.Empty)
            {
                System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(userLocale);
                System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo(userLocale);
            }

This works well, so my dates will be displayed in the format based upon the locale i.e.

12/10/2009 for en-gb and 10/12/2009 for us

However when I persist my dates via LinqToSql I need to store these dates in a common format.

Currently when a U.S. user is running the app the date stored in the DB is in U.S. format and when an U.K. user uses the app, its in a U.K. format.

Any suggestions on how best to achieve this?

Answer 1

Store the date as a datetime value in SQL Server. Then you don't run into a conversion problem.

Answer 2

Brannon has the right solution there. Once you have a variable in a datetime format in SQL you can convert it to other datetime formats using the CONVERT T-SQL keyword