Along this line about the Default datetime value display (in SQL Server 2005) I do not understand why if I declare a variable as a datetime type and set it to the value returned from the GetDate() function I get back a format the same as the above (i.e., 2013-10-30 14:29:40.710), however when returning a datetime type from a user defined function call it is displayed as "Oct 10 2013 2:29PM" since there are no conversions or SET DATEFORMAT involved why is this second format automatically chosen for display?