What is the data type of your column? You can find that out by running this query:SELECT DATA_TYPE FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.[COLUMNS] WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'YourTableName' AND COLUMN_NAME = 'YourColumnName'
If it is DATE, DATETIME, DATETIME2, or SMALLDATETIME you are doing the right thing - don't do any changes to the table or the way the column is stored.If you want to query the table and get the result in the "20010701" format, do it like this:SELECT CONVERT(CHAR(8),YourColumn,112);
However, it would be better for a variety of reasons to not do this conversion in SQL - instead, simply query the column, send the result to the client (such as a presentation layer) and have the client do the necessary conversion.