I'm not sure if this is even possible but I have a query that joins two table and compares two data sets, current month vs previous month. Where I have new data the previous column produces a Null.
I have been trying to replace NULL with the text 'New Account'. However I am aware that I am trying to force a text value into a numeric column.
So I'm just wondering if this is even possible as I haven't found anything online to help.
Thanks in advance.
Just to expand on Gordon's and Larnu's comments.
No, you can't UPDATE a numeric column with text. You can, however, change the final presentation of the value.
Please note that the final result is a string and not a numeric value.
Example
Declare #YourTable table (SomeCol int)
Insert Into #YourTable values
(25)
,(null)
Select SomeCol = coalesce(left(SomeCol,10),'New Account')
From #YourTable
Returns
SomeCol
25
New Account
Related
I have a column in a table that is json. It contains several columns within it.
Example:
Row1: "sTCounts":[{"dpsTypeTest":"TESTTRIAL","cnt":3033244.0}
Row2: "sTCounts":[{"dpsTypeTest":"TESTTRIAL","cnt":3.3}
I need to sum the cnt value for all rows in table. For instance, the above would produce a result of 3033247.3
I'm not familiar with stored procs enough to master. I thought the easiest route would be to create a temp table and extract the value into a column, and then write a query to sum the column values.
The problem is that it creates a column with datatype nvarchar(4000). It won't let me sum that column. I thought of changing the datatype but not sure how. I am trying CAST without luck.
select CAST(json AS varchar) AS JSON_VALUE(jsontext,
'$.sTCounts.cnt') AS PerfCount, TitleNumber
INTO dbo_Testing_Count0
from PerformanceTest
select sum(PerfCount)
from dbo_Testing_Count
Group by PerfCount
The error message is:
Incorrect syntax near 'jsontext'.
Any ideas? I am open to another method to sum the column or changing the datatype whichever the experts can aid on. I appreciate it.
The JSON you provide in your question is not valid... This seems to be just a fragment of a larger JSON. As your data starts with a [ you have to think of it as an array, so the simple json path '$.serviceTierCounts.cnt' won't work probably...
Try this, I've added the opening { and the closing brackets at the end:
DECLARE #mockupTable TABLE(ID INT IDENTITY, YourJson NVARCHAR(MAX));
INSERT INTO #mockupTable VALUES
(N'{"serviceTierCounts":[{"dpsType":"TRIAL","cnt":3033244.0}]}')
,(N'{"serviceTierCounts":[{"dpsType":"TRIAL","cnt":3.3}]}');
--You can read one scalar value using JSON_VALUE directly with a cast. But in this case I need to add [0]. This will tell the engine to read the first (zero-based index!) object's cnt property.
SELECT CAST(JSON_VALUE(YourJson,'$.serviceTierCounts[0].cnt') AS DECIMAL(14,4))
FROM #mockupTable
--But I think, that it's this what you are looking for:
SELECT *
FROM #mockupTable
CROSS APPLY OPENJSON(YourJson,'$.serviceTierCounts')
WITH(dpsType varchar(100)
,cnt decimal(14,4));
The WITH clause will return the object in typed columns side-by-side.
For easy proceeding, you can wrap this as a CTE and continue with the set in the following SELECT.
I have looked and looked and can not find an answer anywhere so I am hoping you guys can help me. I am pulling data from multiple tables using a left join. Some info is not in the right table so it pulls across as NULL. The end user is requesting that all NULL values show as blank. I can easily do this for columns with string datatypes but I have not been able to figure out a way to do this for columns with numeric, int, money, or float datatypes.
See screenshot for simplistic example:
Using SQL Sever 2012
Probably not the answer you want to hear but you might need to convert the numeric columns in your result set to a string type (nvarchar, varchar...etc) and then put a CASE WHEN structure in your SELECT around each one of those columns and check if the value of the field is NULL then print '' the blank string.
Try this;
select
NumberNull=case when ISNUMERIC(YourField)=1 then cast(YourField AS varchar(100)) else '' end
How do I alter a sql varchar column to a decimal column when there are nulls in the data?
I thought:
ALTER TABLE table1
ALTER COLUMN data decimal(19,6)
But I just get an error, I assume because of the nulls:
Error converting data type varchar to numeric. The statement has been terminated.
So I thought to remove the nulls I could just set them to zero:
ALTER TABLE table1
ALTER COLUMN data decimal(19,6) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0
but I dont seem to have the correct syntax.
Whats the best way to convert this column?
edit
People have suggested it's not the nulls that are causing me the problem, but non-numeric data. Is there an easy way to find the non-numeric data and either disregard it, or highlight it so I can correct it.
If it were just the presence of NULLs, I would just opt for doing this before the alter column:
update table1 set data = '0' where data is null
That would ensure all nulls are gone and you could successfully convert.
However, I wouldn't be too certain of your assumption. It seems to me that your new column is perfectly capable of handling NULL values since you haven't specified not null for it.
What I'd be looking for is values that aren't NULL but also aren't something you could turn in to a real numeric value, such as what you get if you do:
insert into table1 (data) values ('paxdiablo is good-looking')
though some may argue that should be treated a 0, a false-y value :-)
The presence of non-NULL, non-numeric data seems far more likely to be causing your specific issue here.
As to how to solve that, you're going to need a where clause that can recognise whether a varchar column is a valid numeric value and, if not, change it to '0' or NULL, depending on your needs.
I'm not sure if SQL Server has regex support but, if so, that'd be the first avenue I'd investigate.
Alternatively, provided you understand the limitations (a), you could use isnumeric() with something like:
update table1 set data = NULL where isnumeric(data) = 0
This will force all non-numeric values to NULL before you try to convert the column type.
And, please, for the love of whatever deities you believe in, back up your data before attempting any of these operations.
If none of those above solutions work, it may be worth adding a brand new column and populating bit by bit. In other words set it to NULL to start with, and then find a series of updates that will copy data to this new column.
Once you're happy that all data has been copied, you should then have a series of updates you can run in a single transaction if you want to do the conversion in one fell swoop. Drop the new column and then do the whole lot in a single operation:
create new column;
perform all updates to copy data;
drop old column;
rename new column to old name.
(a) From the linked page:
ISNUMERIC returns 1 for some characters that are not numbers, such as plus (+), minus (-), and valid currency symbols such as the dollar sign ($).
Possible solution:
CREATE TABLE test
(
data VARCHAR(100)
)
GO
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('19.01');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('23.41');
ALTER TABLE test ADD data_new decimal(19,6)
GO
UPDATE test SET data_new = CAST(data AS decimal(19,6));
ALTER TABLE test DROP COLUMN data
GO
EXEC sp_RENAME 'test.data_new' , 'data', 'COLUMN'
As people have said, that error doesn't come from nulls, it comes from varchar values that can't be converted to decimal. Most typical reason for this I've found (after checking that the column doesn't contain any logically false values, like non-digit characters or double comma values) is when your varchar values use comma for decimal pointer, as opposed to period.
For instance, if you run the following:
DECLARE #T VARCHAR(256)
SET #T = '5,6'
SELECT #T, CAST(#T AS DEC(32,2))
You will get an error.
Instead:
DECLARE #T VARCHAR(256)
SET #T = '5,6'
-- Let's change the comma to a period
SELECT #T = REPLACE(#T,',','.')
SELECT #T, CAST(#T AS DEC(32,2)) -- Now it works!
Should be easy enough to look if your column has these cases, and run the appropriate update before your ALTER COLUMN, if this is the cause.
You could also just use a similar idea and make a regex search on the column for all values that don't match digit / digit+'.'+digit criteria, but i suck with regex so someone else can help with that. :)
Also, the american system uses weird separators like the number '123100.5', which would appear as '123,100.5', so in those cases you might want to just replace the commas with empty strings and try then?
I have a column that stores data like (42,12). Now I want to fetch 42 or 12 (two different select queries). I have searched and found some similar but much more complex scenarios. Is there any easy way of doing it? I am using MSSQL Server 2005.
Given there will always be only two values and they will be integer
The reason you have this problem is because the database (which you may not have any control over), violates first normal form. Among other things, first normal form says that each column should hold a single value, not multiple values. This is bad design.
Now, having said this, the first solution that pops into my head is to write a UDF that parses the value in this column, based on the delimiter and returns either the first or second value.
You can try something like this
DECLARE #Table TABLE(
Val VARCHAR(50)
)
INSERT INTO #Table (Val) SELECT '42,12'
SELECT *,
CAST(LEFT(Val,CHARINDEX(',',Val)-1) AS INT) FirstValue,
CAST(RIGHT(Val,LEN(Val) - CHARINDEX(',',Val)) AS INT) SecondValue
FROM #Table
You can use something like this:
SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX(field, ',', 1)
Note: Its not the efficient way of doing things in rdbms. Consider normalizing your Database.
I currently have a table with a column as varchar. This column can hold numbers or text. During certain queries I treat it as a bigint column (I do a join between it and a column in another table that is bigint)
As long as there were only numbers in this field had no trouble but the minute even one row had text and not numbers in this field I got a "Error converting data type varchar to bigint." error even if in the WHERE part I made sure none of the text fields came up.
To solve this I created a view as follows:
SELECT TOP (100) PERCENT ID, CAST(MyCol AS bigint) AS MyCol
FROM MyTable
WHERE (isnumeric(MyCol) = 1)
But even though the view shows only the rows with numeric values and casts Mycol to bigint I still get a Error converting data type varchar to bigint when running the following query:
SELECT * FROM MyView where mycol=1
When doing queries against the view it shouldn't know what is going on behind it! it should simply see two bigint fields! (see attached image, even mssql management studio shows the view fields as being bigint)
OK. I finally created a view that works:
SELECT TOP (100) PERCENT id, CAST(CASE WHEN IsNumeric(MyCol) = 1 THEN MyCol ELSE NULL END AS bigint) AS MyCol
FROM dbo.MyTable
WHERE (MyCol NOT LIKE '%[^0-9]%')
Thanks to AdaTheDev and CodeByMoonlight. I used your two answers to get to this. (Thanks to the other repliers too of course)
Now when I do joins with other bigint cols or do something like 'SELECT * FROM MyView where mycol=1' it returns the correct result with no errors. My guess is that the CAST in the query itself causes the query optimizer to not look at the original table as Christian Hayter said may be going on with the other views
Ideally, you want to try to avoid storing the data in this form - would be worth splitting the BIGINT data out in to a separate column for both performance and ease of querying.
However, you can do a JOIN like this example. Note, I'm not using ISNUMERIC() to determine if it's a valid BIGINT because that would validate incorrect values which would cause a conversion error (e.g. decimal numbers).
DECLARE #MyTable TABLE (MyCol VARCHAR(20))
DECLARE #OtherTable TABLE (Id BIGINT)
INSERT #MyTable VALUES ('1')
INSERT #MyTable VALUES ('Text')
INSERT #MyTable VALUES ('1 and some text')
INSERT #MyTable VALUES ('1.34')
INSERT #MyTable VALUES ('2')
INSERT #OtherTable VALUES (1)
INSERT #OtherTable VALUES (2)
INSERT #OtherTable VALUES (3)
SELECT *
FROM #MyTable m
JOIN #OtherTable o ON CAST(m.MyCol AS BIGINT) = o.Id
WHERE m.MyCol NOT LIKE '%[^0-9]%'
Update:
The only way I can find to get it to work for having a WHERE clause for a specific integer value without doing another CAST() on the supposedly bigint column in the where clause too, is to use a user defined function:
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[fnBigIntRecordsOnly]()
RETURNS #Results TABLE (BigIntCol BIGINT)
AS
BEGIN
INSERT #Results
SELECT CAST(MyCol AS BIGINT)
FROM MyTable
WHERE MyCol NOT LIKE '%[^0-9]%'
RETURN
END
SELECT * FROM [dbo].[fnBigIntRecordsOnly]() WHERE BigIntCol = 1
I don't really think this is a great idea performance wise, but it's a solution
To answer your question about the error message: when you reference a view name in another query (assuming it's a traditional view not a materialised view), SQL Server effectively does a macro replacement of the view definition into the consuming query and then executes that.
The advantage of doing this is that the query optimiser can do a much better job if it sees the whole query, rather than optimising the view separately as a "black box".
A consequence is that if an error occurs, error descriptions may look confusing because the execution engine is accessing the underlying tables for the data, not the view.
I'm not sure how materialised views are treated, but I would imagine that they are treated like tables, since the view data is cached in the database.
Having said that, I agree with previous answers - you should re-think your table design and separate out the text and integer data values into separate columns.
Try changing your view to this :
SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT ID,
Cast(Case When IsNumeric(MyCol) = 1 Then MyCol Else null End AS bigint) AS MyCol
FROM MyTable
WHERE (IsNumeric(MyCol) = 1)
Have you tried to convert other table's bigint field into varchar? As for me it makes sense to perform more robust conversion... It shouldn't affect your performance too much if varchar field is indexed.
Consider creating a redundant bigint field to hold the integer value of af MyCol.
You may then index the new field to speed up the join.
Try using this:
SELECT
ID,
CAST(MyCol AS bigint) as MyCol
FROM
(
SELECT TOP (100) PERCENT
ID,
MyCol
FROM
MyTable
WHERE
(isnumeric(MyCol) = 1)
) as tmp
This should work since the inner select only return numeric values and the outer select can therefore convert all values from the first select into a numeric. It seems that in your own code SQL tries to cast before executing the isnumeric function (maybe it has something to do with optimizing).
Try doing the select in 2 stages.
first create a view that selects all columns where my col is nummeric.
Then do a select in that view where you cast the varchar field.
The other thing you could look at is your design of tables to remove the need for the cast.
EDIT
Are some of the numbers larger than bigint?
Are there any spaces, leading, trailing or in the number?
Are there any format characters? Decimal points?