String and number conversion and comparison

[Monkey Steve]

Hi,

I'm writing a website in asp.net(vb) with an access database behind
it. As part of the site I have a table which has stores maximum and
minimum values. These are integers at present. However - I need to
change them to strings so that I can store the string "unknown" if
these are not known.

Problem is that my comparisons >= etc then won't work properly.
Because of the way I am using the db I cannot have a pointer value, eg
-1, and then replace it on the webpage so it would have to be done
usig strings.

I am dynamically generating an sql string from search criteria which
needs to do comparisons using supplied ints. How can I change the way
that sql dos this in the sql search string?

Any help is great,

Cheers,

Steve

[MGFoster]

Monkey Steve wrote:

Hi,

I'm writing a website in asp.net(vb) with an access database behind
it. As part of the site I have a table which has stores maximum and
minimum values. These are integers at present. However - I need to
change them to strings so that I can store the string "unknown" if
these are not known.

Problem is that my comparisons >= etc then won't work properly.
Because of the way I am using the db I cannot have a pointer value, eg
-1, and then replace it on the webpage so it would have to be done
usig strings.

I am dynamically generating an sql string from search criteria which
needs to do comparisons using supplied ints. How can I change the way
that sql dos this in the sql search string?

Why not use a NULL for unknown? Comparisons on NULL values return NULL.
Nulls displayed in forms appear as blanks.

--
MGFoster:::mgf00 <at> earthlink <decimal-point> net
Oakland, CA (USA)