How to calculate difference in hours (decimal) bet

Question

I have to calculate the difference in hours (decimal type) between two dates in SQL Server 2008.

I couldn't find any useful technique to convert datetime to decimal with 'CONVERT' on MSDN.
Can anybody help me with that?

UPDATE:
To be clear, I need the fractional part as well (thus decimal type). So from 9:00 to 10:30 it should return me 1.5.

Answer 1

Using Postgres I had issues with DATEDIFF, but had success with this:

  DATE_PART('day',(delivery_time)::timestamp - (placed_time)::timestamp) * 24 + 
  DATE_PART('hour',(delivery_time)::timestamp - (placed_time)::timestamp) +
  DATE_PART('minute',(delivery_time)::timestamp - (placed_time)::timestamp) / 60

which gave me an output like "14.3"

Answer 2

DATEDIFF but note it returns an integer so if you need fractions of hours use something like this:-

CAST(DATEDIFF(ss, startDate, endDate) AS decimal(precision, scale)) / 3600