How can I maintain the same column format in R data frame as in my SQL table?

Question

I have a user id number in my data base that is made of 17 characters. When I fetch the table with RODBC I get the number in a scientific number format. How can I maintain the same format as in my SQL table?

I use MSSQL, R 3.0.2, RODBC as a connector.

Thanks.

Answer 1

In your call to sqlFetch or sqlQuery, pass as.is = TRUE to retrieve everything as character vectors. Then you can manually convert any other columns as you need.