OQL CAST
Last modified: February 18, 2025
Description
The CAST function converts an expression to a specific data type.
Syntax
The syntax is as follows:
CAST ( expression AS data_type )expression
expression specifies the expression to convert.
data_type
data_type specifies the data type to convert the expression to. The data type can be one of the following:
BOOLEANDATETIMEDECIMALINTEGERLONGSTRING
Supported Conversions
The table below describes which CAST conversions are supported:
- ✔ – the conversion is supported
- ✔* – the conversion is supported, but the behavior differs per database
- ✘ – the conversion is not supported
| From \ To | BOOLEAN | DATETIME | DECIMAL | INTEGER | LONG | STRING (unlimited) | STRING (limited) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BOOLEAN | ✔ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✔* | ✔*¹ |
| DATETIME | ✘ | ✔ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✔* | ✔*² |
| DECIMAL | ✘ | ✘ | ✔* | ✔* | ✔* | ✔* | ✔*² |
| INTEGER | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| LONG | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| STRING | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
[1] BOOLEAN to STRING (limited) is supported only if the resulting string length is ≥ 5.
[2] The conversion of DATETIME and DECIMAL to STRING (limited) is supported only if the value fully fits into the string length. The conversion can fail if the resulting string length is < 20.
Examples
A frequent use case for CAST is to convert your date from the DATETIME data type to a more readable STRING type:
CAST ( your_datetime_variable AS string )