Parse : This conversion function is used to compute the expression and return the output to the desired data type. But, this function is in SQL Server 2012 and onwards.
Parse function suitable for data and numeric data and it requires CLR because it is a .NET function. So, as usual there will be some performance impact if we use in large mission critical application. We still have cast and convert functions for type casting.
This function requires a valid data and appropriate convertible data type. Otherwise, parse function raise error.
I think the best feature is this function is language or culture option. We can specify the culture type in the conversion. So, the output reflects the given culture with converted data type.
Usage
PARSE ( string_value AS data_type [ USING culture ] )
string_value : It is nvarchar(4000) storage.
data_type : These are the valid data types
culture : Optional string that identifies the culture in which string_value is formatted. Please refer this blog post for languages in SQL Server.
Example
1. Parsing currency of different region.
SELECT PARSE(‘€345,98′ AS money USING ‘de-DE’) AS Result;
Output
2. Parsing date of the given language or locale
SELECT PARSE(’13 August 2013′ AS datetime2 USING ‘en-us’) AS Result;
Output
