Re: Storing trailing zeros in mantissa

On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 02:03:51 GMT, "Jim Kennedy" <kennedy-down_with_spammers_at_no_spam.comcast.net> wrote:

>"Brian Peasland" <dba_at_remove_spam.peasland.com> wrote in message
>news:3F2E7367.9795E0B8_at_remove_spam.peasland.com...

>> The idea that the trailing zero has "meaning", i.e. plus or minus some
>> factor, is not a scientific approach. If I meant 10.205 or 10.195, then
>> I'd store that number, pure and simple. If this trailing zero were
>> allowed to hold meaning (other than zero), then how do you handle that
>> when you perform computations with these numbers? You're better off
>> coming up with your own metric space......
>
>Brian,
>You are correct, but I think what he wants (his requirement) is to also know
>what the precision of the number is. This implies either another column
>that indicates the precision or an object type that has a number and its
>precision.

How about declaring the column to have a lot more precision? I think the original post mentioned the column was NUMBER(18,2), which might be fine for adding and subtracting currency, but I wouldn't use it for recording the paths of subatomic particles in a supercollider.

John

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