>>Where do you get such numbers? In Excel?
>
>For indexing, I created a numeric field called mindex and stuffed it with all the date data: year, month, day, hour, minutes, like: 201211011711
>Now, when I try to use mindex in an SQL expression, if I want to strip off the hours or minutes, I first have to do a
>str(mindex) and that returns in scientific notation because
>
>If nExpression has Numeric or Float type, and nLength is less than the number of digits in nExpression, and , STR( ) returns a value using scientific notation.

You can use

LEFT(CAST mIndex as C(12)), 10) as YearMonthDayHour

Or just use the second parameter in STR, e.g.

STR(mIndex, 12)

Also, if you want your number to remain number, but just without minutes part, use

floor(mIndex / 100) or CAST(mIndex/100 as I)