SQL - select most 'active' time from db

Question

Very closely related to SQL - Select most 'active' timespan fromdb but different question.

"I have a table of transactions. In this table I store the transaction datetime in UTC. I have a few months of data, about 20,000 transactions a day."

How would change

  select datepart(hour, the_column) as [hour], count(*) as total 
  from t 
  group by datepart(hour, the_column) 
  order by total desc

so that I can select the specific year, month, day, hour, minute, and second that was the most 'active'.

To clarify, I'm not looking for which hour or minute of the day was most active. Rather, which moment in time was the most active.

Answer 1

Select 
    DATEPART(year, the_column) as year
    ,DATEPART(dayofyear,the_column) as day
    ,DATEPART(hh, the_column) as hour
    ,DATEPART(mi,the_column) as minute
    ,DATEPART(ss, the_column) as second
    ,count(*) as count from t
Group By 
    DATEPART(year, the_column)
    , DATEPART(dayofyear,the_column)    
    , DATEPART(hh, the_column)
    , DATEPART(mi,the_column)
    , DATEPART(ss, the_column)
order by count desc