Question

I have problem with my query when I was trying to convert the varchar field to double (numeric). I have this sql statement:

SELECT fullName, CAST(totalBal as numeric(9,2) FROM client_info ORDER BY totalBal DESC

Actually I want to display the values of totalBal in descending order. But since that field is in varchar, the resultset is sometimes wrong. This is the resultset when I tried to query using this statement:

SELECT fullName, totalBal FROM client_info ORDER BY totalBal DESC 

Resultset is:

The sorting of totalBal is not correct. So I decided to convert the varchar to numeric so that it might be sorted perfectly. Any idea?

Answer 1

use DECIMAL() or NUMERIC() as they are fixed precision and scale numbers.

SELECT fullName, 
       CAST(totalBal as DECIMAL(9,2)) _totalBal
FROM client_info 
ORDER BY _totalBal DESC