CAST and CONVERT SQL Server 2005

Explicitly converts an expression of one data type to another. CAST and CONVERT provide similar functionality.

Syntax

Using CAST:

CAST ( expressionAS data_type )

Using CONVERT:

CONVERT ( data_type [ ( length ) ] ,expression [ ,style ] )

Arguments

expression

Is any valid Microsoft® SQL Server™ expression. For more information, see Expressions.

data_type

Is the target system-supplied data type, including bigint and sql_variant. User-defined data types cannot be used. For more information about available data types, see Data Types.

length

Is an optional parameter of nchar, nvarchar, char, varchar, binary, or varbinary data types.

style

Is the style of date format used to convert datetime or smalldatetime data to character data (nchar, nvarchar, char, varchar, nchar, or nvarchar data types), or the string format when converting float, real, money, or smallmoney data to character data (nchar, nvarchar, char, varchar, nchar, or nvarchar data types).

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