PostgreSQL Type Casting (::)

Postgres's own shorthand for CAST — same conversion, more compact syntax.

What & Why

The :: operator is Postgres-specific shorthand for CAST — value::type means exactly the same thing as CAST(value AS type), just shorter to write.

See How It Works

EXAMPLE QUERY

-- these two lines do exactly the same thing
SELECT CAST('55000' AS INTEGER);
SELECT '55000'::INTEGER;

RESULT — both return the same value

expression	result
CAST('55000' AS INTEGER)	55000
'55000'::INTEGER	55000

The result uses the same Queryflo columns shown in the worked example.

Now You Try

Practice this concept

Marketing wants campaign spend rounded to whole-number output using PostgreSQL double-colon casting.

Available schema

marketing

Prefix tables with marketing.table_name.

namespendwhole_spend

marketing.campaigns

Column	Type
id	integer
name	text
channel	text
spend	numeric
start_date	date
end_date	date
status	text
target_segment	text
legacy_id	text

query.sql

Beginner business practice