Issue of Select into Temp table with NULL fields

Sometimes when we create Temporary tables we might need to create some null fields. Idea is to update them later.

Consider this script which seems correct.

SELECT 'JOHN' as Name, NULL as Company into #temp

Now we will try to populate the null field with some data, probably with char data.

UPDATE #temp
SET Company = 'ABC and Company'

We are getting this error.

If you check the error message carefully, you might notice it’s a converting error. Actual problem is null field is considered to be an int, unless it’s properly defined with a type.

So correct statement to create the temp table is like this;

SELECT 'JOHN' as Name, Cast(null as varchar(50)) as Company into #temp

Additional features of Dynamics CRM 2013

Convert Guid to a String in SQL

Probably it’s just a simple thing, but I had to play a little bit to figure out this... so I thought of posting…

If you want to convert a Guid to a String in your query this is how you do it.

Id =CONVERT(VARCHAR(36),opportunityid)

Practical usage comes in SSRS reports; where you can’t play around with Guids within the report surface, in fact you need to get it as a string. I faced this when I needed to have a link to real record from the report.