Ok, so I am going to go ahead with the straw grabbing. I was messing around with Drew's suggestion to ouput to text, combined with casting various substrings as...

Well my hopes are all but dashed now. I spoke to our mainframe guru, and she told me the column is a user defined data type. The first...

Paul

I'm using the MSDASQL provider. I tried using the IBM provider that came with my IBM...

Thank you both for the tips. After doing some research (google), I believe I am working with a packed decimal field. I suspected this was the case when...

Thank you Paul. I'm still a bit confused, but I did find where the 'B' is coming from, sort of...

DECLARE @string VARCHAR(100)

SELECT @string = 0x4200000012F80C4D00000003C5144E00000000650C

SELECT CONVERT(CHAR(10),@string)

The 'B' shows up...

Zarko, I did find that one, but the link does not work. Thanks.

Thanks to both of you for such a quick response. In searching BOL for an answer, I...

The Oracle concept of database is pretty different from the SQL Server concept of it, in simple terms - if you have an Oracle instance up and running you have...

Thank you for putting my mind at ease Jeff. I have been trying everything under the sun, and I have been unable to come closer than the final balance...

I thought I did Jeff, but I will have to double check again. Your...

Thanks Kevin. Although I see lots of discussions about CLR's, I have absolutely no idea what that is.

DOH! I was looking for a 'Ln' function...

Maybe I'm just rambling to crickets chirping here, but there does not seem to be a natural log function in SQL Server. LOG10 works just as well though.

-- Given...

Ok, I knew that pesky e would come in handy some day.

X^3 = 343

3 * Ln(x) = Ln(343)

Ln(x) = 1.945910149

7 = e^1.945910149

Problem solved. I will admit straight up that...

Well, now I think the bankers and old ladies feathers will really be ruffled. I tried DECIMAL(28,18) and now I'm left with a positive balance of 35.991877150516022430. I...