DateTime.MinValue != SQL Server minimum datetime value

I’m sure that most people know this but I’m betting that there are a few that don’t. I say this because I just found a line of code that is trying to insert DateTime.MinValue into a SQL Server datetime column. The result is:

Arithmetic overflow error converting expression to data type datetime.

The value of DateTime.MinValue is 1 Jan 0001 12:00:00am.

The minimum value that you can put into a SQL Server datetime column is 1 Jan 1753. On the other hand, if you’re lucky enough to be using SQL Server 2008 and you have control over the table definitions, you can use the new datetime2 datatype. Datetime2 has an extended date range of 1 Jan 0001 to 31 Dec 9999.