Returns a single-precision floating-point representation of a number or a decimal, integer, or floating-point number represented by a character string.
Example:
Using the EMPLOYEE table, find the ratio of salary to commission for employees whose commission is not zero. The columns involved (SALARY and COMM) have DECIMAL data types. To eliminate the possibility of out-of-range results, REAL is applied to SALARY so that the division is carried out in floating point:
SELECT EMPNO, REAL(SALARY)/COMM FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE COMM > 0