Hugo Kornelis (9/27/2010)
That all being said, I completely fail to see the acutal use of a function that tells me that a string value "is either a number or its not". What good is it to know that a value is a number if I can still not convert it to a numerical data type without the risk of getting a runtime error? You may see a good use for such a function, but I don't.
The only possible use I can think of is as a preliminary check in a user defined implementation:
if IsNumeric(@value)
begin
--It might be numeric so now do some proper validation
-- (which is probably more resource-expensive than the built-in function
end
else
--Definitely not numeric
But that's just trying to find a use for the sake of it, I don't think I'd bother in real life!