Casting rules

The following casting rules apply:

Integers can be implicitly cast to decimals and doubles. For implicit casts to decimals, the resulting decimals have a precision of 10 and a scale of 0. Integers can be explicitly cast to these types, as well as to strings.

Decimals can be implicitly cast to doubles. Decimals can be explicitly cast to doubles, as well as to integers and strings. Conversion to integer type may result in rounding or truncation of data.

Doubles can be explicitly cast to strings, as well as to integers and decimals. Conversion to decimal and integer types may result in rounding or truncation of data.

Timestamps can be explicitly cast to strings. Casting to other types is not permitted.

Strings can be implicitly or explicitly cast to timestamps. For explicit casting, the strings must be of the form:

yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss.fff

Strings can be explicitly cast to integers, decimals, and doubles.

Because databases vary in their implementation, casts to strings do not have a defined format. For example, the same value can be represented as 6E5, 60000, or 60000.00.

All types can be implicitly cast to the same type.

Table 7-5 summarizes the casting rules for Actuate SQL data types.

Table 7-5

Casting rules for Actuate SQL types

	To INTEGER	To DECIMAL	To DOUBLE	To VARCHAR	To TIMESTAMP
From INTEGER	Implicit casting occurs	Implicit casting occurs	Implicit casting occurs	Explicit casting required	Casting not permitted
From DECIMAL	Explicit casting required	Implicit casting occurs	Implicit casting occurs	Explicit casting required	Casting not permitted
From DOUBLE	Explicit casting required	Explicit casting required	Implicit casting occurs	Explicit casting required	Casting not permitted
From VARCHAR	Explicit casting required	Explicit casting required	Explicit casting required	Implicit casting occurs	Implicit casting occurs
From TIMESTAMP	Casting not permitted	Casting not permitted	Casting not permitted	Explicit casting required	Implicit casting occurs

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