How to group by month from Date field using sql

Question

How can I group only by month from a date field (and not group by day)?

Here is what my date field looks like:

2012-05-01

Here is my current SQL:

select  Closing_Date, Category,  COUNT(Status)TotalCount from  MyTable
where Closing_Date >= '2012-02-01' and Closing_Date <= '2012-12-31'
and Defect_Status1 is not null
group by  Closing_Date, Category

Answer 1

Use the DATEPART function to extract the month from the date.

So you would do something like this:

SELECT DATEPART(month, Closing_Date) AS Closing_Month, COUNT(Status) AS TotalCount
FROM t
GROUP BY DATEPART(month, Closing_Date)

Answer 2

Try the Following Code

SELECT  Closing_Date = DATEADD(MONTH, DATEDIFF(MONTH, 0, Closing_Date), 0), 
        Category,  
        COUNT(Status) TotalCount 
FROM    MyTable
WHERE   Closing_Date >= '2012-02-01' 
AND     Closing_Date <= '2012-12-31'
AND     Defect_Status1 IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY DATEADD(MONTH, DATEDIFF(MONTH, 0, Closing_Date), 0), Category;