Conversions change data values from one data type to another. For example, an assessor database can store the last date that a parcel was sold as a simple text string. You can convert these text strings to date strings so you can use Date Functions on them.
You can also convert numeric or text strings to a particular numeric format. For example, if your data source stores a numeric value as a single-precision floating-point value, you can convert it to double-precision.
You can convert numeric values into text strings, for example, to extract a substring or find the number of characters in the string.