RE: How to store Value greater than 38 digits ?? Help !!

Hmmmm...I read an article from DEC (eep!) that was addressing the falacy of the Alpha chip being less accurate mathematically than VAXen. It discussed such age old things as rounding problems, two's complement, and significant digits. Sorry for not being a pack rat, but that article's long gone.

But it brings to mind a question: If you have a 39-digit number, are you really worried if it's off by 1 or 10 or 100 or 1000 or 10000 or higher? How many *significant* digits are required?

For example, DCL on OpenVMS only supports 32-bit signed integers -- max value of 2GB - 1. When computing free bytes on an 18GB drive, this becomes a problem unless you first divide the free space, by 1024 for example, to compute Kbytes instead of bytes (which, BTW, Oracle forgot in the OpenVMS port of the semi-Intelligent Agent). Then everything fits neatly in a 32-bit signed int. And since I don't care if a drive has only 1K or 1023 or 10 bytes free (better not be that low!), the lost accuracy isn't significant.

Could you apply the same principle to your 38-digits?

HTH!

Rich Jesse                           System/Database Administrator
Rich.Jesse_at_qtiworld.com              Quad/Tech International, Sussex, WI USA

> -----Original Message-----
> From: DENNIS WILLIAMS [mailto:DWILLIAMS_at_LIFETOUCH.COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 9:58 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> Subject: RE: How to store Value greater than 38 digits ?? Help !!
>
>
> Shradha - What are you saying?
> 1. You require more than 38 digits of accuracy?
> 2. Your number is larger than 38 digits.
>
> If the problem is the first, wow, you must be into something
> incredible.
> If the problem is the second, no problem. Data also stores
> "scale", which
> can be up to 127. That means 10 to the 127th power.
>
> Dennis Williams
> DBA, 20% OCP
> Lifetouch, Inc.
> dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 9:08 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>
>
> Hi DBAs,
>
> One of my projects is facing a problem, they are using a
> numeric datatype
> for a column, in the process part the calulation is leading
> to a number
> larger than 38 digits.
>
> Therefore they are not getting a result ie procedure is not returning
> anything.
>
> If you have come across such a thing ?...Inputs are welcome
>
> Thanks and regards,
> Shradha

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Author: Jesse, Rich
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