[dba-SQLServer] SQL Server 2008 Display Formatting Problem

Stuart McLachlan stuart at lexacorp.com.pg
Sat May 26 17:13:11 CDT 2012


A lot depends on what type InvoiceTotal is: Decimal, Float, Money, SmallMoney?
You will get different results when converting different types to VARCHAR.

Based on your output, it looks as though InvoiceTotal is a Float, which "1" will always convert 
to 8 digits.


-- 
Stuart

On 26 May 2012 at 13:47, Alan Lawhon wrote:

> I (sort of) figured out the problem.  Solely on a hunch, I decided to
> comment out all of the code except for the block of statements that handle
> the 50 percent calculation.  (The line with the CONVERT function was the
> line producing the compile error, so it made sense to isolate on that block
> of code.)  I then ran the code with the CONVERT function still in place to
> calculate (and display) the "Payment" field.  The modified code appears as
> follows:
> 
> USE AP
> GO
>     SELECT InvoiceNumber, VendorName, '50% Payment' AS PaymentType,
>            InvoiceTotal AS [Invoice Total],
>            '$' + CONVERT(varchar, (InvoiceTotal * 0.5), 1) AS Payment
>     FROM Invoices INNER JOIN Vendors
>            ON Invoices.VendorID = Vendors.VendorID
>     WHERE InvoiceTotal BETWEEN 500 AND 10000.00
> ORDER BY PaymentType DESC, VendorName, InvoiceNumber
> 
> Interestingly, this code executed (no compile error) so the CONVERT function
> worked  although the style parameter didn't produce the exact result that
> the SQL Server documentation indicates.  The:
> 
>    '$' + CONVERT(varchar, (InvoiceTotal * 0.5), 1) AS Payment
> 
> field calculation produced output that looked like $1062.12500 when it
> should have appeared as: $1,062.13.  Maybe I'm a bit confused as to how
> precision and scale work when dealing with decimal and money data types.  It
> might also be the case that when you have a UNION query, SQL Server doesn't
> play nice with the CONVERT function.
> 
> This is nitpicking anyway, so I'm going to let it go and move on to the next
> topic.
> 
> Alan C. Lawhon
>        
> 
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--
Stuart McLachlan

Ph:    +675 340 4392 
Mob: +675 7100 2028
Web: http://www.lexacorp.com.pg



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