Setting the NUMERIC_STRING column option

If a data source string column contains only numeric digits, and no other characters including blanks, set the NUMERIC_STRING column option to Y.

Setting the NUMERIC_STRING column option to Y allows queries that use this column to be optimized for sorting operations and comparison operations. For example:

ALTER NICKNAME nickname 
   ALTER COLUMN local_column_name 
   OPTIONS (SET NUMERIC_STRING 'Y')