One of the new TSQL feature in SQL Server 2012 is TRY_CONVERT, basically it’s a function that will return null if the object passed is not compatible with the expected casting. In earlier version of SQL Server we don’t have this feature which means you need to make sure your data is cast-able to the expected format

Earlier Version of SQL Server – you can run this

SELECT CONVERT(INT, ‘abc’)

and it will throw an error

Msg 245, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Conversion failed when converting the varchar value ‘abc’ to data type int.

Then you will normally do work around with this to avoid the error which means no record will be returned when the object is not a valid data type

SELECT CONVERT(INT, ‘abc’) AS TEST WHERE ISNUMERIC(‘abc’) = 1

SQL Server 2012

SELECT TRY_CONVERT(INT, ‘abc’) AS TEST

This will still return a record but with NULL value when the data is not cast-able