Nearly every day Microsoft updates some of its existing articles on its Docs.Microsoft.com documentation website. This article displays excerpts from recently updated articles. Links to new articles might also be listed.

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Recent updates are reported for the following date range and subject:

• Date range of updates:   2017-07-18   -to-   2017-09-11
• Subject area:   T-SQL.

The following links jump to new articles that have been added recently.

1. PREDICT (Transact-SQL)
2. ALTER EXTERNAL LIBRARY (Transact-SQL)
3. CREATE EXTERNAL LIBRARY (Transact-SQL)
4. DROP EXTERNAL LIBRARY (Transact-SQL)

This section displays the excerpts of updates gathered from articles that have recently experienced a large update.

The excerpts displayed here appear separated from their proper semantic context. Also, sometimes an excerpt is separated from important markdown syntax that surrounds it in the actual article. Therefore these excerpts are for general guidance only. The excerpts only enable you to know whether your interests warrant taking the time to click and visit the actual article.

For these and other reasons, do not copy code from these excerpts, and do not take as exact truth any text excerpt. Instead, visit the actual article.

This compact list provides links to all the updated articles that are listed in the Excerpts section.

1. CAST and CONVERT (Transact-SQL)

Updated: 2017-09-08          

K. Using CAST with arithmetic operators

The following example calculates a single column computation by dividing the product unit price (UnitPrice) by the discount percentage (UnitPriceDiscountPct). This result is converted to an int data type after being rounded to the nearest whole number. Uses AdventureWorksDW.

SELECT ProductKey, UnitPrice,UnitPriceDiscountPct,
       CAST(ROUND (UnitPrice*UnitPriceDiscountPct,0) AS int) AS DiscountPrice
FROM dbo.FactResellerSales
WHERE SalesOrderNumber = 'SO47355'
      AND UnitPriceDiscountPct > .02;

..!NCLUDE-NotShown--ssResult--../../includes/ssresult-md.md)]

ProductKey  UnitPrice  UnitPriceDiscountPct  DiscountPrice
----------  ---------  --------------------  -------------
323         430.6445   0.05                  22
213         18.5043    0.05                  1
456         37.4950    0.10                  4
456         37.4950    0.10                  4
216         18.5043    0.05                  1

L. Using CAST to concatenate

The following example concatenates noncharacter expressions by using CAST. Uses AdventureWorksDW.

SELECT 'The list price is ' + CAST(ListPrice AS varchar(12)) AS ListPrice
FROM dbo.DimProduct
WHERE ListPrice BETWEEN 350.00 AND 400.00;

..!NCLUDE-NotShown--ssResult--../../includes/ssresult-md.md)]

ListPrice
------------------------
The list price is 357.06
The list price is 364.09
The list price is 364.09
The list price is 364.09
The list price is 364.09

M. Using CAST to produce more readable text

The following example uses CAST in the SELECT list to convert the Name column to a char(10) column. Uses AdventureWorksDW.

SELECT DISTINCT CAST(EnglishProductName AS char(10)) AS Name, ListPrice
FROM dbo.DimProduct
WHERE EnglishProductName LIKE 'Long-Sleeve Logo Jersey, M';

..!NCLUDE-NotShown--ssResult--../../includes/ssresult-md.md)]

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