Ranjan Marathe Blog

TIL: TRY_CAST in SQL with BIGINT and VARCHAR

Problem: A column contains inconsistent data, mixing numeric and non-numeric values. Direct CAST fails for invalid values.

Fix: Use TRY_CAST to handle conversions gracefully.

Example:

Scenario: A column data_column contains mixed data: | data_column | |—————| | 12345 | | 67890 | | INVALID123 | | NULL |

Query: ```sql SELECT TRY_CAST(data_column AS BIGINT) AS converted_bigint, TRY_CAST(data_column AS VARCHAR(10)) AS converted_varchar FROM sample_table;