Richard Warr (11/16/2010)

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I thought it was an interesting question as well - currently more people have it wrong than right which shows that we can still be surprised at the "behind the scenes" antics of SQL Server.

tommyh (11/16/2010)

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[quote]Richard Warr (11/16/2010)

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You shouldnt complain about spelling. This is an international site and as long as you can understand what someone else writes... its okay. Perfect spelling/grammar is rare.

Also considering your own "taime" spelling... well... mistakes happen

/T (non native english speaker)

tommyh (11/16/2010)

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You shouldnt complain about spelling. This is an international site and as long as you can understand what someone else writes... its okay. Perfect spelling/grammar is rare.

Also considering your own "taime" spelling... well... mistakes happen

Daniel Bowlin (11/16/2010)

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I don't understand the implicit conversion. Why is it happening?

Microsoft http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190309.aspx

When an operator combines two expressions of different data types, the rules for data type precedence specify that the data type with the lower precedence is converted to the data type with the higher precedence. If the conversion is not a supported implicit conversion, an error is returned. When both operand expressions have the same data type, the result of the operation has that data type.

SQL Server uses the following precedence order for data types:

user-defined data types (highest)

sql_variant

xml

datetimeoffset

datetime2

datetime

smalldatetime

date

time

float

real

decimal

money

smallmoney

bigint

int

smallint

tinyint

bit

ntext

text

image

timestamp

uniqueidentifier

nvarchar (including nvarchar(max) )

nchar

varchar (including varchar(max) )

char

varbinary (including varbinary(max) )

binary (lowest)

mister.magoo (11/16/2010)

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Thanks to those of you who appreciate this question.

To those who think it had unnecessary "tricks" in it, I did try several variants of this question and they all ended up being too easy.

The "tricks" were deliberate and designed to check whether you would notice the implicit conversion and whether you even knew it would happen.

If you don't like the question, I am sorry - for those that like to be challenged to check every small detail I think it provides a sufficient level of complexity to give you a good challenge!

Have a nice day!