Design Consideration for Number Column

Is it a good design to use NUMBER for all numeric columns (vs specific precision, say, NUMBER(8,2))? Is there any real benefit to specify a precision ?

I have this problem because Donald Bales in his book Java Programming with JDBC, Oreilly (chap 10.2) does recommend us defining both Integer and floating point values as NUMBER. I am not sure if JDBC type mapping is a reason for his recommendation.

Thx for any advice Received on Fri Apr 01 2005 - 09:46:00 CST