Question

When trying to copy the values of TableA to TableB in SQL 2008 environment, I’m trying to conditionally map some values to a new type and value.

For example, TableA has column Letters varchar(1) and stores letters of the alphabet, and I want to move these values to TableB in column Numbers int.

INSERT INTO TableB( SomeColumn1, Numbers, SomeColumn2 )
SELECT SomeColumn1, 
       LetterToNumber = 
       CASE Letters
              WHEN 'A' THEN 1
              ...
              WHEN 'Z' THEN 26
       END,
       SomeColumn2
FROM TableA

Is this the right way to go about doing this?

Answer 1

INSERT INTO TableB( SomeColumn1, Numbers, SomeColumn2 )
SELECT SomeColumn1, 
       ASCII(UPPER(Letters)) - 64, --Uppercase A is 65 decimal, 41 hex
       SomeColumn2
FROM TableA