I came upon this issue when I was building some views to support legacy integrations to an app that I was refactoring. The view is supposed to have exactly the same column definitions as a table in the old database that I am redesigning, so to make SSIS packages and other integrations run smoothly, I want the view’s columns to have the same datatypes, nullability, etc.
But there are some gotchas to watch out for with CAST and CONVERT.
Continue readingI’m trying a new type of blog post, and if it works out, I would be happy to post more of the same going forward. The format is a real-world troubleshooting mystery, and I’ll clue you in to the details along the way.
How quickly can you crack it?
NULL is an undefined value and as such, it has a special status as values and datatypes go in SQL Server. There are quite a few potential pitfalls to watch out for when you’re dealing with data that can contain NULL values.
sqlsunday.com 