Datatype Conversions

Many conversions from one datatype to another are handled automatically by the SAP ASE server. These are called implicit conversions. Other conversions must be performed explicitly with the convert, hextointt, intttohex, hextobigint, bintostr, strtobin, and biginttohex functions.

See Transact-SQL Users Guide for details about datatype conversions supported by the SAP ASE server.

• Automatic Conversion of Fixed-Length NULL Columns
  Only columns with variable-length datatypes can store null values. When you create a NULL column with a fixed-length datatype, the SAP ASE server automatically converts it to the corresponding variable-length datatype. The SAP ASE server does not inform the user of the datatype change.
• Handling Overflow and Truncation Errors
  The arithabort option determines how the SAP ASE server behaves when an arithmetic error occurs. The two arithabort options, arithabort arith_overflow and arithabort numeric_truncation, handle different types of arithmetic errors.