Cast the reciever to the given SQL type. You can specify a ruby class as a type, and it is handled similarly to using a database independent type in the schema methods.

[Source]

     # File lib/sequel/sql.rb, line 238
238:       def cast(sql_type)
239:         Cast.new(self, sql_type)
240:       end

Cast the reciever to the given SQL type (or the database‘s default integer type if none given), and return the result as a NumericExpression.

[Source]

     # File lib/sequel/sql.rb, line 244
244:       def cast_numeric(sql_type = nil)
245:         cast(sql_type || Integer).sql_number
246:       end

Cast the reciever to the given SQL type (or the database‘s default string type if none given), and return the result as a StringExpression, so you can use + directly on the result for SQL string concatenation.

[Source]

     # File lib/sequel/sql.rb, line 251
251:       def cast_string(sql_type = nil)
252:         cast(sql_type || String).sql_string
253:       end