How to Convert an Integer to a Decimal in SQL Server

Problem

You’d like to convert an integer value to a DECIMAL data type in SQL Server.

Let’s convert an integer to the DECIMAL data type.

Solution 1

We’ll use the CAST() function. Here’s the query you’d write:

SELECT 
  CAST(12 AS DECIMAL(7,2)) AS decimal_value;

Here is the result:

Discussion

Use the CAST() function to convert an integer to a DECIMAL data type. This function takes an expression or a column name as the argument, followed by the keyword AS and the new data type. In our example, we converted an integer (12) to a decimal value (12.00). The displayed value has two decimal points because DECIMAL in CAST() has two decimal points.

SQL Server provides another option: CONVERT(). This is not a SQL Standard function like CAST(). The query below shows its use.

Solution 2

Here’s another way to convert an integer to a DECIMAL type:

SELECT 
  CONVERT(DECIMAL(7,2), 12) AS decimal_value;

This query produces the same result as CAST(), but takes two mandatory arguments: the data type and an expression, value, or column name to convert. An optional third parameter specifies how the value should be formatted in its new type. Read more about value formatting in the official SQL Server documentation.

If you don’t need to return the value in a certain format, use CAST().