Question

I am using a bulk insert to import data from a CSV file. One of the fields is a number, and I import it as a DECIMAL(4,3). However, this data file has a few values where the number is “3.2342e-05”. This obviously throws an error since this is a char. How can I convert this number to zero? For my purposes, I plan to consider any number that small as a zero anyway.

I figure that I will be importing the data into a temp table (staging table) first, so that I can clean it up in there, and then I will be inserting it from there into my final table.

SQL Server 2008

EDIT: One thing I am considering is importing the data as a char and then converting the column type, and then using a CASE statement to set anything greater than 1 to a zero. This field should never be greater than 1, which is why I am able to do this.

Answer 1

This is recognised as float, so you can double CAST via float