Cast Or Convert

Aaron Bertrand discusses the Cast and Convert functions:

Neither is really any more typing than the other, and they both work the exact same way under the covers. So it would seem that the choice between CASTand CONVERT is merely a subjective style preference. If that were always true, however, you probably wouldn’t be reading this post.

There are other cases where you need to use CONVERT in order to output correct data or perform the right comparison. Some examples:

Read on for examples.  My preference is CAST, mostly because it’s fewer characters to type.  But there are certainly advantages to using CONVERT.