Error in SQL case statement when trying to create binary flag? - sql

Question

Here's my query where I'm testing my case structure:
SELECT TOP 1 CASE 130
WHEN '000000000000000' THEN '0'
WHEN '' THEN '0'
WHEN 'XXX' THEN '0'
WHEN 'RETIRED' THEN '0'
WHEN 'STUDENT' THEN '0'
ELSE '1'
END AS employed_flag
INTO #employedbeta
FROM CreditBureau.Experian
I'm just trying to make a new temporary table, but I'd like my case to work first. I keep getting the error:
Conversion failed when converting the varchar value 'XXX' to data type int.
In the database, the column 130 is a char, and I don't know why it thinks I want to make it a number. SQL server management studio, if it matters.
The column name is 130, I left the '1' off because I rewrote it here but I get the error regardless in my actual query.

Answer 1

130 is an integer literal. If that's really the column name, you'll have to escape it using double quotes. As a side note, you should probably return the same type (char) in the else branch too:
CASE "130"
WHEN '000000000000000' THEN '0'
WHEN '' THEN '0'
WHEN 'XXX' THEN '0'
WHEN 'RETIRED' THEN '0'
WHEN 'STUDENT' THEN '0'
ELSE '1'
END AS employed_flag

Answer 2

130 is a really bad column name. But, I would simplify the logic to:
SELECT TOP 1 (CASE WHEN [130] IN ('000000000000000', '', 'XXX', 'RETIRED', 'STUDENT')
THEN 0 ELSE 1
END) AS employed_flag
INTO #employedbeta
FROM CreditBureau.Experian;
Note that I also changed the employed_flag to a numeric value rather than a string. That makes more sense to me.