formatting columns in a view

I have a view that I created from 4 SQL tables in order to query data for a report. I can't change the format of columns in the original table but would like to format the columns in the view as a different data type.

The original table has the values formated as varchar, the info in the columns is numbers and I would like to have the values changed to decimal when the view is queried.

Is this even possible? Any help would be appreciated.

You should be able to cast them in the select clause of your view (Assuming ALL of the data in those columns is numeric)

CREATE VIEW v1

AS

SELECT CAST(charcol1 AS Decimal(18,2)) AS numcol1, ...

|||Perfect. Thank you!