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 Understanding decimal/numeric and - 10^38 +1 thro

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Rock_query
Yak Posting Veteran

55 Posts

Posted - 2013-07-26 : 19:18:43
On the Microsoft website, I am trying to understand the how the decimal and numeric data types work. It says that valid values for precision are:

- 10^38 +1 through 10^38 - 1

I don't understand the purpose of the negative sign before the first 10.

I understand that decimal (p,s) refers to haing a total of p digits (before and after the decimal) and only s number of digits to the right of the decimal. How does the equation above relate to the 's' portion of the syntax?


Bustaz Kool
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

1834 Posts

Posted - 2013-07-26 : 19:52:56
It just means that you could have a number that was somewhere between

-100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 and +100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (actually these numbers are off by 1 but you get the idea)

In order get support a number of that size you would need to define your variable/column as having a datatype of "decimal(38)"

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visakh16
Very Important crosS Applying yaK Herder

52326 Posts

Posted - 2013-07-27 : 03:53:40
quote:
Originally posted by Rock_query

On the Microsoft website, I am trying to understand the how the decimal and numeric data types work. It says that valid values for precision are:

- 10^38 +1 through 10^38 - 1

I don't understand the purpose of the negative sign before the first 10.

I understand that decimal (p,s) refers to haing a total of p digits (before and after the decimal) and only s number of digits to the right of the decimal. How does the equation above relate to the 's' portion of the syntax?






depending on how many digits you want after decimal places you will choose a suitable value for s and then the maximum number of digits you can include before decimal would be p-s
ie if you want upto 4 decimal precision you'll choose s=4

then number of digits before decimal can be maximum of 38-4 = 34

ie -10^34 +1 to 10^34 - 1 with 4 decimal places

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