dwain.c (7/2/2013)

---

Sean Lange (6/27/2013)

---

DataAnalyst011 (6/27/2013)

---

From time to time I need to check if a column is completely numeric (or usually, check for the row contain something other than numeric). I've read the ISNUMERIC has problems. I've used LIKE '%[0-9]%'? successfully, but even after reading around in several places I still don't understand how it works. And I don't want to use anything I can't support. Would someone mind giving me a blow by blow explanation of what each "thing" is doing here? (And if the statement needs to be improved please do so. I've seen some use a ^ in the statement before).

This is a regular expression. All it does is checks if the the string has any number in it (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9).

Hmmm... Technically I'd say it is Microsoft SQL's (somewhat limited) proxy for a Regular Expression. And I don't think they refer to it as that. I believe BOL always refers to it as a pattern (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms179859.aspx).

The RegEx for this case would be something like: [0-9]{1,30}$ (or ^[0-9]{1,30}$ depending on whether you're doing a positive or negative test).

{1,30} specifies the overall length of the allowable characters.

There are add-ins to SQL (e.g., via CLR or the SQL Sharp library[/url]) that would allow validation by RegEx.