How to change number formatting for Hana SQL query session or connection? - hana

Question

For our customers that use SAPB1 with HanaDB we execute the same query to pull data out (using the ADO.NET interface). Some have their regional system systems that appear to control numerical formatting according to their locale, etc.
Say for example when executing: SELECT RDR1."Quantity" FROM RDR1
For a customer in the USA, RDR1."Quantity" = 2.000000
For a customer in Germany, RDR1."Quantity" = 2,000000 (notice the comma vs decimal)
I assume the actual database storage of the value is the same, it is just the query engine that is applying default system formatting based on the settings that makes the end result formatted one way or another.
Now, using a brute force approach and per column this type of change can be made:
REPLACE(CAST(ROUND(RDR1."Quantity",2) AS DECIMAL(10,2)), ',', '.') AS "Quantity”
to give me "2.00"
However we have many columns like this and we want to make the code usable in all cases vs having multiple instances of the same queries for different regions -- and it just seems there should be a way to tell the query engine to return values as if it were in the USA and ignore default system locale and currency settings.
Question: Is it possible to make a high level setting change instead of per column formatting/casting - either using Hana SQL query code (like a session variable or something) or a connection setting when we establish the ADO.NET connection to HanaDB that will just make the values come out as if they were in the USA?
I haven't found any yet but perhaps it is not so easily found in the documentation how to handle it.

Answer 1

No, there is no HANA setting that would define how the application, SAP Business One in your case, renders the data to the user screen.
For SAP B1 you can find the documentation for setting these user settings here.
These settings include "thousands separator", "separator", "decimal places", and others.
But on HANA DB level, there is no global setting for that.
Also, the REPLACE workaround mentioned turns the input number data into a string, losing all the number semantics (ordering, mathematical operations) and increase the memory requirements for those values.
Rather avoid this technique if possible.

Answer 2

If you want to alter the decimal separator of the program output, just tell it to .NET.
An option is to set the Current Thread's Culture like in this snippet:
using System;
using System.Globalization;
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
decimal d = 2021.1002m;
Console.WriteLine("Current Culture is {0}.", System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name);
Console.WriteLine("d = {0}.", d);
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture =
new CultureInfo("en-US");
Console.WriteLine("Current Culture now is {0}.", System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name);
Console.WriteLine("And d = {0}.", d);
}
}
For me the ouput is:
Current Culture is es-ES.
d = 2021,1002.
Current Culture now is en-US.
And d = 2021.1002.