Re: What really is NUMBER under the covers

Ken Sproule wrote:
>
> I would like to thank everyone in advance for your help.
>
> My question is simply that I need to know exactaly what Oracle does
> with a NUMBER(10,2) internally. I mean, How much space is actually
> consumed on the disk in storage AND where is this documented.
>
> Does NUMBER work like VARCHAR/2 in that NUMBER without the ( 10, 2)
> would be big enough to hold a 40 character numeric ( that's what a
> double), and ( 10 , 2 ) is a long?
>
> Best,
>
> Ken Sproule
> Kenmn_at_tds.net

        Internally Oracle stores numbers using a floating point format with a variable length fraction. As a result the amount of space required to store a number will vary and is not related to the declared length.

hth
--
Jerry Gitomer
Once I learned how to spell DBA, I became one. Received on Wed Feb 02 2000 - 23:24:46 CST