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Extracting the sign and the absolute value

In some situations, you may need to use mathematical functions in your database development. After complex calculations, you may need to check the sign of an expression or its absolute value. The functions provided by SQL Server for these tasks are:

  • ABS(expression)
  • SIGN(expression)

In this exercise, you will work with the following variables:

DECLARE @number1 DECIMAL(18,2) = -5.4;
DECLARE @number2 DECIMAL(18,2) = 7.89;
DECLARE @number3 DECIMAL(18,2) = 13.2;
DECLARE @number4 DECIMAL(18,2) = 0.003;

The @result variable stores the result of the following calculation: @number1 * @number2 - @number3 - @number4.

You will calculate the absolute value and the sign of this expression.

This exercise is part of the course

Functions for Manipulating Data in SQL Server

View Course

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

DECLARE @number1 DECIMAL(18,2) = -5.4;
DECLARE @number2 DECIMAL(18,2) = 7.89;
DECLARE @number3 DECIMAL(18,2) = 13.2;
DECLARE @number4 DECIMAL(18,2) = 0.003;

DECLARE @result DECIMAL(18,2) = @number1 * @number2 - @number3 - @number4;
SELECT 
	@result AS result,
    -- Show the absolute value of the result
	___ AS abs_result;
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