Question

I have a CSV I’m importing into our database. One of the “columns” contains data that should be an INT but some rows have numbers that only fall in the BIGINT range (because they’re test data from one of our partners). We store INT internally and have no desire to change.

I want to safely downcast from BIGINT to INT. By safely, I mean no errors should be raised if an arithmetic overflow happens. If the cast/conversion succeeds, I want my script to go on. If it fails, I want it to short-circuit. I can’t seem to figure out the proper syntax. This is what I’ve got:

DECLARE @UserIDBigInt BIGINT = 9723021913; -- actually provided by query param
--Setting within the INT range successfully converts
--SET @UserIDBigInt = 5;
DECLARE @UserID INT = CONVERT(INT, @UserIDBigInt);
--DECLARE @UserID INT = CAST(@UserIDBigInt AS INT);
SELECT @UserIDBigInt
SELECT @UserID
IF @UserID IS NOT NULL BEGIN
    SELECT 'Handle it as reliable data'
END

I’ve thought about comparing @UserIDBigInt to the valid range of an INT (-2^31 (-2,147,483,648) to 2^31-1 (2,147,483,647)), but I really don’t like that approach. That’s my fallback. I was hoping for some language constructs or built-in functions I could use. If I absolutely have to compare to the valid range, are there at least some built-in constants (like C#’s int.MinValue & int.MaxValue)?

EDIT: Corrected typo.

Answer 1

Add these to your script:

SET ARITHABORT OFF;
SET ARITHIGNORE ON;

This will convert any overflow values to NULL.

More info here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms184341.aspx