How can I design a query to pause / sleep / wait for a specified amount of time?

I am testing a monitoring application against a SQL Server 2000 instance. How can I write a T-SQL query that takes an amount of time that I specify? For example, most scripting languages have something like the SLEEP command which allows you to pause script execution for a specified amount time. I am looking for something similar that is compatible with SQL Server 2000. This is intended to test the long-running query threshold settings of the monitoring application.

If you are looking for a function to block the execution batch for a specified amount of time, you can use WAITFOR in SQL Server 2000. This function is similar to SLEEP function in Oracle. Usage examples:

WAITFOR DELAY '00:00:30';     -- wait for 30 seconds
WAITFOR TIME '13:30';         -- wait until server time is 13:30

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#64591, answer score: 21