Question

First, thanks for all your help! You really make a difference, and I GREATLY appreciate it.

So I have a Varchar column and it holds a 16 digit number, example: 1000550152872026

select *
FROM Orders 
where isnumeric([ord_no]) = 0

returns: 0 rows

---

select cast([ord_no] as bigint)
FROM Progression_PreCall_Orders o
order by [ord_no]

returns: Error converting data type varchar to bigint.

How do I get this 16 digit number into a math datatype so I can add and subtract another column from it?

UPDATE: Found scientific notation stored as varchar ex: 1.00054E+15

How do I convert that back into a number then?

Answer 1

DECIMAL datatype seems to work fine:

DECLARE @myVarchar AS VARCHAR(32)
SET @myVarchar = '1000550152872026'

DECLARE @myDecimal AS DECIMAL(38,0)
SET @myDecimal = CAST(@myVarchar AS DECIMAL(38,0))
SELECT @myDecimal + 1

Also, here’s a quick example where IsNumeric returns 1 but converting to DECIMAL fails:

DECLARE @myVarchar AS VARCHAR(32)
SET @myVarchar = '1000550152872026E10'
SELECT ISNUMERIC(@myVarchar)

DECLARE @myDecimal AS DECIMAL(38,0)
SET @myDecimal = CAST(@myVarchar AS DECIMAL(38,0)) --This statement will fail

EDIT
You could try to CONVERT to float if you’re dealing with values written in scientific notation:

DECLARE @Orders AS TABLE(OrderNum NVARCHAR(64), [Date] DATETIME)
INSERT INTO @Orders VALUES('100055015287202', GETDATE())
INSERT INTO @Orders VALUES('100055015287203', GETDATE())
INSERT INTO @Orders VALUES('1.00055015287E+15', GETDATE()) --sci notation

SELECT 
    CONVERT(FLOAT, OrderNum, 2) + 
    CAST(REPLACE(CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), GETDATE(), 120), '-', '') AS FLOAT)
FROM @Orders