[sql] convert string to date in sql server

I think style no. 111 (Japan) should work:

SELECT CONVERT(DATETIME, '2012-08-17', 111)

And if that doesn't work for some reason - you could always just strip out the dashes and then you have the totally reliable ISO-8601 format (YYYYMMDD) which works for any language and date format setting in SQL Server:

SELECT CAST(REPLACE('2012-08-17', '-', '') AS DATETIME)