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Kristen Kinnear-Ohlmann
Kristen Kinnear-Ohlmann

Posted on • Originally published at kristenkinnearohlmann.dev

Ensuring Conversion of a Float to Nvarchar in T-SQL

I ran into an interesting problem this week creating backfill data for an analytics process that involved a non-GUID ID value. The data is processed and stored in Microsoft SQL Server databases. These ID values are 8 numeric characters that ultimately are used as data type nvarchar in ETL processing.

My source data was an Excel spreadsheet I imported using the Import item from the standard Tasks option in SQL Server Management Studio. When I examined the data after import, the values appeared as I expected.

initial value of ID

I completed development on the needed transformations for the data. Since I planned to export the final table to each server where it was needed, I added an INTO <schema.table> statement to the final temp table to create the permanent table for the data. When I returned to QA the data, I noticed my ID values were now in scientific notation.

ID value as scientific notation

Ultimately, these values are aggregated in a visualization tool for trends and predictions; these values would not accurately match those already in the table. When I checked the table that was created from my INTO statement, I found the ID column was translated as a float. I changed the data type to nvarchar and added a simple conversion to the INSERT statement to resolve.

SELECT CONVERT(nvarchar,@IDValue) As IdValue
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This still resulted in a value that was in scientific notation!

By keying into the fact that SQL Server was identifying the ID value as a float, I located a solution for T-SQL that ensured the conversion of the value to nvarchar was complete and accurate.

SELECT CONVERT(nvarchar,CONVERT(bigint,@IDValue)) As IDValue
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convert the float value to bigint then to nvarchar

By first converting the float value to bigint, the actual value is preserved. Further converting the resulting bigint value to nvarchar ensures a smooth insert into the table via an explicit data type. With this revised conversion, I was able to finish building the needed backfill table to complete my work.

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