How to make a null date display as a 0

Question

I have the select statement. I am trying to make the t.Date2 column appear as a 0 instead of a null. As you can see I used the IsNull to show nulls as a 0. The problem is that the field is a datetime field so instead of showing 0 it shows 1900-01-01 00:00:00.000. Is there a way to make it show just a 0?

SELECT t.Name, t.Number, t.Status, t.Date1, IsNull(t.Date2, 0),
    DateDiff(mi, t.Date2, GetDate()) AS TimeIdleMinutes

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

A datetime value can't have the value 0, so you would need to use a type that could hold both a representation of a date and 0. That would for example be a varchar value.

Example:

IsNull(convert(varchar(25), t.Date2, 120), '0')