cast

Converts the specified value to another datatype.

Syntax

cast (expression as datatype [(length | precision[, scale])])

expression – is the value to be converted from one datatype or date format to another. It includes columns, constants, functions, any combination of constants, and functions that are connected by arithmetic or bitwise operators orsubqueries.
When Java is enabled in the database, expression can be a value to be converted to a Java-SQL class.

When unichar is used as the destination datatype, the default length of 30 Unicode values is used if no length is specified.
length – is an optional parameter used with char, nchar, unichar, univarchar, varchar, nvarchar, binary and varbinary datatypes. If you do not supply a length, the SAP ASE server truncates the data to 30 characters for character types and 30 bytes for binary types. The maximum allowable length for character and binary expression is 64K.
precision – is the number of significant digits in a numeric or decimal datatype. For float datatypes, precision is the number of significant binary digits in the mantissa. If you do not supply a precision, the SAP ASE server uses the default precision of 18 for numeric and decimal datatypes.
scale – is the number of digits to the right of the decimal point in a numeric, or decimal datatype. If you do not supply a scale, the SAP ASE server uses the default scale of 0.

Example 1 – Converts the date into a more readable datetime format:

select cast("01/03/63" as datetime)
go

 --------------------------
        Jan  3 1963 12:00AM

(1 row affected)

Example 2 – Converts the total_sales column in the title database to a 12-character column:
```
select title, cast(total_sales as char(12))
```

ANSI SQL – Compliance level: ANSI compliant.

Any user can execute cast.