Xref: alice comp.databases.oracle.misc:52415 Path: alice!news-feed.fnsi.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feeder.qis.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail From: Jerry Gitomer Newsgroups: comp.databases.oracle.misc Subject: Re: What really is NUMBER under the covers Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2000 00:24:46 -0500 Lines: 26 Message-ID: <3899111E.125A7E81@erols.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: lH4dpxKIvfuwxiADpc2SvpHCiDzFS82kUhQLHgRazF4= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 3 Feb 2000 05:12:47 GMT X-Accept-Language: en X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.12-20 i586) 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@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.