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From: "-CELKO-" <jcelko212@earthlink.net>
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Subject: Re: Why all the max length constraints?
Date: 29 May 2006 15:08:29 -0700
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>> Joe Celko defending the SQL types on the grounds that they were chosen to fit well with existing programming languages in which SQL would be embedded <<

It was not so much as "existing programming languages" (i.e. ANSI X3J
languages, with whom we were communicating) as it was the current crop
of physical data types (BCD, IEEE floating point, two-complement
integers, etc.) found in the hardware, which the X3J languages and
proprietary languages were using. Thus we have subtle differences in
FLOAT and REAL, DECIMAL(s,p) and NUMERIC(s,p), and character set
collations, etc.

If a new language comes along, it will probably be built on those
hardware data types.