pe****@gmx.net (Peter Blatt) wrote in message news:<ck*************@news.t-online.com>...
Does 5 represent the total numer of digits (including the fractional portion) or only the number of places
BEFORE the decimal point? Moreover does the number include the decimal point?
Are there differences between the databases servers ?
Peter
In Oracle, you would normally use the 'NUMBER(5,3)' declaration
instead of 'DECIMAL(5,3)'. It results in 5 digits being stored, with
the decimal place implied at position 3 - resulting in 6 'printer'
positions.
In Oracle, you can also specify 'NUMBER(5,-3)' which stores 5 digits
and puts the decimal 3 'zeros' after the last digit, giving you a
column or variable that displays 'thousands'.
Finally, in Oracle, the traditional internal representation of a
number is BCD - Binary Coded Decimal - with 2 digits per byte, up to
38 digits. Other variations, including IEEE Foating Point numerics
are possible as well.
If you need more details for the Oracle side, go to
http://docs.oracle.com for all online documentation, and look for the
SQL Reference Manual for the version(s) of interest. Excrutiating
detail is available in Chapter 1 under Datatypes.
Each RDBMS is exactly the same, only different. The 'only different'
is very subtle but significant enough that a generic application can
not swap out the back end without experienceing some negative impact -
frequently in scalability.
HTH
/Hans
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