Scientific Notation is a way to represent small or large numbers. Instead of writing out a billion as 1,000,000,000, it can be expressed as 1 * 10^9 (1 multiplied by 10 to the 9th power).
If you work with Microsoft Excel, you may have seen large numbers converted to an alternate format like this: 1.00E+009. This is also a billion, with the numbers to the right of the E as the power of 10. With a small number, we will see a minus sign instead of a plus, for 10 to a negative power.
SQL Server and T-SQL can work with scientific notation as well, working with numbers in that same format that Excel uses.
Convert To Scientific Notation:
If we need to convert a number into scientific notation, we can use the FORMAT command, with ‘E’ for Exponential format:
SELECT FORMAT(1000000000, 'E');
Returns: 1.000000E+009
Convert From Scientific Notation:
To convert from the exponential values, we can simply CAST it to our preferred data type. With a billion, we can CAST to an integer.
SELECT CAST(1.000000E+009 AS INT);
Returns 1000000000
If we were working with a small number, we would choose DECIMAL/NUMERIC or the FLOAT type instead.
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