Exclude '-1.79769313486232E+308' from table using select query in SQL - sql

Question

I want to get the average of the data in one of the table but I get "Arithmetic overflow error converting expression to data type float." exception. My table looks like,
I have to get the average of floating points in the table.
I want to exclude '-1.79769313486232E+308' from the table. How to do that?
Query that I have,
SELECT PS.Name, Z.[Round]
,AVG(Z.[EstimatedValue])
,AVG(Z.[InformationGain])
FROM [dbo].[IntermediateScores] Z
INNER JOIN [dbo].[PScale] PS
ON Z.[ScaleId] = PS.Id
GROUP BY PS.Name, Z.[Round]
ORDER BY PS.Name,Z.[Round]

Answer 1

Assuming that you are running SQL Server (which the syntax of your query and the error message that you showed tend to indicate), you could use TRY_CAST() to handle values that do not fit in the FLOAT datatype. When the conversion fails, TRY_CAST() returns NULL, which aggregate function AVG() ignores.
SELECT
PS.Name,
Z.[Round],
AVG(TRY_CAST(Z.[EstimatedValue] AS FLOAT)),
AVG(TRY_CAST(Z.[InformationGain] AS FLOAT))
FROM [dbo].[IntermediateScores] Z
INNER JOIN [dbo].[PScale] PS ON Z.[ScaleId] = PS.Id
GROUP BY PS.Name, Z.[Round]
ORDER BY PS.Name,Z.[Round]
In general, you want to avoid relying on implicit conversion; it seems like your data is not stored in a numeric datatype, which is the root cause of your problem. Explicit conversion is a better practice, since it is easier to debug when things go wrong.