Question

I m in a situation where i need to compare two tables against Projectnumber. Both tables has field ProjectNumber but one has datatype INT and other has VARCHAR(45). So when i try to run following query it result some un-matched records too

 Select prj.Projectnumber,ps.ProjectNumber as 'ProjectNumber2'
 from projectlistsearch ps 
 inner join project prj on ps.ProjectNumber= prj.ProjectNumber

This result some correct records but also result bad like this

ProjectNumber     ProjectNumber2
8                 08-809076
11                11-437881
11                11-505934
2007              2007-45750
2011              2011-0A76

I tried type casting as well but did not work.

How can i overcome this situation to get only completely matched record?

thanks

Answer 1

I’d advise to convert the INT to VARCHAR and compare those two, because for example converting a VARCHAR to INT when the text begins with decimal numbers, only the parseable prefix part will be converted to int:

Input:

'08-809076'

Parseable prefix:

08

Converted to INT

8

The other way round, the VARCHAR value '8' is compared against '08-809076' which will not match.