Type Conversion Functions

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This functionality is experimental and may be changed or removed completely in a future release. Elastic will take a best effort approach to fix any issues, but experimental features are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features.

Functions for converting an expression of one data type to another.

`CAST`

Synopsis.

CAST(
    expression 
 AS data_type)

	Expression to cast
	Target data type to cast to

Description. Casts the result of the given expression to the target data type. If the cast is not possible (for example because of target type is too narrow or because the value itself cannot be converted), the query fails.

SELECT CAST('123' AS INT) AS int;

      int
---------------
123

SELECT CAST(123 AS VARCHAR) AS string;

    string
---------------
123

SELECT YEAR(CAST('2018-05-19T11:23:45Z' AS TIMESTAMP)) AS year;

     year
---------------
2018

`CONVERT`

Synopsis.

CONVERT(
    expression, 
    data_type)

	Expression to convert
	Target data type to convert to

Description. Works exactly like CAST with slightly different syntax. Moreover, apart from the standard data types it supports the corresponding ODBC data types.

SELECT CONVERT('123', SQL_INTEGER) AS int;

      int
---------------
123

SELECT CONVERT('123', INTEGER) AS int;

      int
---------------
123

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