Columns designated as character via CAST(x AS VARCHAR) are still treated as numeric

[francisbarton]

Type: Bug

The status bar at the bottom of the window shows the number of unique values for a column, when that column is a character type.
When the column is numeric it shows a mean and a sum.

If I have a column of numeric values x and I would like ADS to treat it as character, if I do CAST(x AS VARCHAR) then select the column in the viewer, it still shows average and sum in the status bar. I would like it to treat the column as a character and show me the summary of how many unique values are in the column of data.

Azure Data Studio version: azuredatastudio 1.49.1 (2f696aa, 2024-08-13T18:12:38.831Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.19045
Restricted Mode: No
Preview Features: Enabled
Modes:

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1240P (16 x 2112)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled canvas_oop_rasterization: enabled_on direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on opengl: enabled_on rasterization: enabled raw_draw: disabled_off_ok video_decode: enabled video_encode: enabled vulkan: disabled_off webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled webgpu: enabled
Load (avg)	undefined
Memory (System)	15.70GB (1.84GB free)
Process Argv
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%

Extensions (5)

Extension	Author (truncated)	Version
catppuccin-vsc	Cat	3.8.0
damolinx-bookmarks	dam	0.3.7
vscode-notes	dio	1.2.1
azuredatastudio-select-top-n	jim	0.0.5
git-graph	mhu	1.30.0

(3 theme extensions excluded)