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What is the default Precision and Scale for a Number in Oracle?
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i know basic difference between them ,i wanted to know
if i do not specify precision and scale and define the datatype as number
what are the default values for precision and scale assigned?
create table a(id number);
create table b(id number(3));
both above queries creates a table with column and number datatype but what is the difference from
1)performance point of view
2)How it is handled internally by database
3)Is there any advantage of specifying number as datatype over number(3)
Answer from Oracle perspective...
NUMBER Datatype
The NUMBER datatype stores zero as well as positive and negative fixed numbers with absolute values from 1.0 x 10-130 to (but not including) 1.0 x 10126. If you specify an arithmetic expression whose value has an absolute value greater than or equal to 1.0 x 10126, then Oracle returns an error. Each NUMBER value requires from 1 to 22 bytes.
Specify a fixed-point number using the following form:
NUMBER(p,s)
where:
p is the precision, or the total number of significant decimal digits, where the most significant digit is the left-most nonzero digit, and the least significant digit is the right-most known digit. Oracle guarantees the portability of numbers with precision of up to 20 base-100 digits, which is equivalent to 39 or 40 decimal digits depending on the position of the decimal point.
s is the scale, or the number of digits from the decimal point to the least significant digit. The scale can range from -84 to 127.
Positive scale is the number of significant digits to the right of the decimal point to and including the least significant digit.
Negative scale is the number of significant digits to the left of the decimal point, to but not including the least significant digit. For negative scale the least significant digit is on the left side of the decimal point, because the actual data is rounded to the specified number of places to the left of the decimal point. For example, a specification of (10,-2) means to round to hundreds.
Scale can be greater than precision, most commonly when e notation is used. When scale is greater than precision, the precision specifies the maximum number of significant digits to the right of the decimal point. For example, a column defined as NUMBER(4,5) requires a zero for the first digit after the decimal point and rounds all values past the fifth digit after the decimal point.
It is good practice to specify the scale and precision of a fixed-point number column for extra integrity checking on input. Specifying scale and precision does not force all values to a fixed length. If a value exceeds the precision, then Oracle returns an error. If a value exceeds the scale, then Oracle rounds it.
Specify an integer using the following form:
NUMBER(p)
This represents a fixed-point number with precision p and scale 0 and is equivalent to NUMBER(p,0).
Specify a floating-point number using the following form:
NUMBER
The absence of precision and scale designators specifies the maximum range and precision for an Oracle number.
And
NUMBER[(precision [, scale]])
Number having precision p and scale s. The precision p can range from 1 to 38. The scale s can range from -84 to 127
Related
As is evident by the MSDN description of decimal certain precision ranges have the same amount of storage bytes assigned to them.
What I don't understand is that there are differences in the sizes of the range. How the range from 1 to 9 of 5 storage bytes has a width of 9, while the range from 10 to 19 of 9 storage bytes has a width of 10. Then the next range of 13 storage bytes has a width of 9 again, while the next has a width of 10 again.
Since the storage bytes increase by 4 every time, I would have expected all of the ranges to be the same width. Or maybe the first one to be smaller to reserve space for the sign or something but from then on equal in width. But it goes from 9 to 10 to 9 to 10 again.
What's going on here? And if it would exist, would 21 storage bytes have a precision range of 39-47 i.e. is the pattern 9-10-9-10-9-10...?
would 21 storage bytes have a precision range of 39-47
No. 2 ^ 160 = 1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976 - which has 49 decimal digits. So this hypothetical scenario would cater for a precision range of 39-48 (as a 20 byte integer would not be big enough to hold any 49 digit numbers larger than that)
The first byte is reserved for the sign.
01 is used for positive numbers; 00 for negative.
The remainder stores the value as an integer. i.e. 1.234 would be stored as the integer 1234 (or some multiple of 10 of this dependant on the declared scale)
The length of the integer is either 4, 8, 12 or 16bytes depending on the declared precision. Some 10 digit integers can be stored in 4 bytes however to get the whole range in would overflow this so it needs to go to the next step up.
And so on.
2^32 = 4,294,967,295 (10 digits)
2^64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 (20 digits)
2^96 = 79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,336 (29 digits)
2^128 = 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 (39 digits)
You need to use DBCC PAGE to see this, casting the column as binary does not give you the storage representation. Or use a utility like SQL Server internals viewer.
CREATE TABLE T(
A DECIMAL( 9,0),
B DECIMAL(19,0),
C DECIMAL(28,0) ,
D DECIMAL(38,0)
);
INSERT INTO T VALUES
(999999999, 9999999999999999999, 9999999999999999999999999999, 99999999999999999999999999999999999999),
(-999999999, -9999999999999999999, -9999999999999999999999999999, -99999999999999999999999999999999999999);
Shows the first row stored as
And the second as
Note that the values after the sign bit are byte reversed. 0x3B9AC9FF = 999999999
I see this in Wikipedia log 224 = 7.22.
I have no idea why we should calculate 2^24 and why we should take log10......I really really need your help.
why floating-points number's significant numbers is 7 or 6 (?)
Consider some thoughts employing the Pigeonhole principle:
binary32 float can encode about 232 different numbers exactly. The numbers one can write in text like 42.0, 1.0, 3.1415623... are infinite, even if we restrict ourselves to a range like -1038 ... +1038. Any time code has a textual value like 0.1f, it is encoded to a nearby float, which may not be the exact same text value. The question is: how many digits can we code and still maintain distinctive float?
For the various powers-of-2 range, 223 (8,388,608) values are normally linearly encoded.
Example: In the range [1.0 ... 2.0), 223 (8,388,608) values are linearly encoded.
In the range [233 or 8,589,934,592 ... 234 or 17,179,869,184), again, 223 (8,388,608) values are linearly encoded: 1024.0 apart from each other. In the sub range [9,000,000,000 and 10,000,000,000), there are about 976,562 different values.
Put this together ...
As text, the range [1.000_000 ... 2.000_000), using 1 lead digit and 6 trailing ones, there are 1,000,000 different values. Per #3, In the same range, with 8,388,608 different float exist, allowing each textual value to map to a different float. In this range we can use 7 digits.
As text, the range [9,000,000 × 103 and 10,000,000 × 103), using 1 lead digit and 6 trailing ones, there are 1,000,000 different values. Per #4, In the same range, there are less than 1,000,000 different float values. Thus some decimal textual values will convert to the same float. In this range we can use 6, not 7, digits for distinctive conversions.
The worse case for typical float is 6 significant digits. To find the limit for your float:
#include <float.h>
printf("FLT_DIG = %d\n", FLT_DIG); // this commonly prints 6
... no idea why we should calculate 2^24 and why we should take log10
224 is a generalization as with common float and its 24 bits of binary precision, that corresponds to fanciful decimal system with 7.22... digits. We take log10 to compare the binary float to decimal text.
224 == 107.22...
Yet we should not take 224. Let us look into how FLT_DIG is defined from C11dr §5.2.4.2.2 11:
number of decimal digits, q, such that any floating-point number with q decimal digits can be rounded into a floating-point number with p radix b digits and back again without change to the q decimal digits,
p log10 b ............. if b is a power of 10
⎣(p − 1) log10 _b_⎦.. otherwise
Notice "log10 224" is same as "24 log10 2".
As a float, the values are distributed linearly between powers of 2 as shown in #2,3,4.
As text, values are distributed linearly between powers of 10 like a 7 significant digit values of [1.000000 ... 9.999999]*10some_exponent.
The transition of these 2 groups happen at different values. 1,2,4,8,16,32... versus 1,10,100, ... In determining the worst case, we subtract 1 from the 24 bits to account for the mis-alignment.
⎣(p − 1) log10 _b_⎦ --> floor((24 − 1) log10(2)) --> floor(6.923...) --> 6.
Had our float used base 10, 100, or 1000, rather than very common 2, the transition of these 2 groups happen at same values and we would not subtract one.
An IEEE 754 single-precision float has a 24-bit mantissa. This means it has 24 binary bits' worth of precision.
But we might be interested in knowing how many decimal digits worth of precision it has.
One way of computing this is to consider how many 24-bit binary numbers there are. The answer, of course, is 224. So these binary numbers go from 0 to 16777215.
How many decimal digits is that? Well, log10 gives you the number of decimal digits. log10(224) is 7.2, or a little more than 7 decimal digits.
And look at that: 16777215 has 8 digits, but the leading digit is just 1, so in fact it's only a little more than 7 digits.
(Of course this doesn't mean we can represent only numbers from 0 to 16777215! It means we can represent numbers from 0 to 16777215 exactly. But we've also got the exponent to play with. We can represent numbers from 0 to 1677721.5 more or less exactly to one place past the decimal, numbers from 0 to 167772.15 more or less exactly to two decimal points, etc. And we can represent numbers from 0 to 167772150, or 0 to 1677721500, but progressively less exactly -- always with ~7 digits' worth of precision, meaning that we start losing precision in the low-order digits to the left of the decimal point.)
The other way of doing this is to note that log10(2) is about 0.3. This means that 1 bit corresponds to about 0.3 decimal digits. So 24 bits corresponds to 24 × 0.3 = 7.2.
(Actually, IEEE 754 single-precision floating point explicitly stores only 23 bits, not 24. But there's an implicit leading 1 bit in there, so we do get the effect of 24 bits.)
Let's start a little smaller. With 10 bits (or 10 base-2 digits), you can represent the numbers 0 upto 1023. So you can represent up to 4 digits for some values, but 3 digits for most others (the ones below 1000).
To find out how many base-10 (decimal) digits can be represented by a bunch of base-2 digits (bits), you can use the log10() of the maximum representable value, i.e. log10(2^10) = log10(2) * 10 = 3.01....
The above means you can represent all 3 digit — or smaller — values and a few 4 digits ones. Well, that is easily verified: 0-999 have at most 3 digits, and 1000-1023 have 4.
Now take 24 bits. In 24 bits you can store log10(2^24) = 24 * log(2) base-10 digits. But because the top bit is always the same, you can in fact only store log10(2^23) = log10(8388608) = 6.92. This means you can represent most 7 digits numbers, but not all. Some of the numbers you can represent faithfully can only have 6 digits.
The truth is a bit more complicated though, because exponents play role too, and some of the many possible larger values can be represented too, so 6.92 may not be the exact value. But it gets close, and can nicely serve as a rule of thumb, and that is why they say that single precision can represent 6 to 7 digits.
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First of all i woild like to point out that i am not native speaker and i really need some terms used more commonly.
And the second thing i would like to mention is that i am not a math genious. I am really trying to understand everything about programming.. but ieee-754 makes me think that it'll never happan.. its full of mathematical terms i don't understand..
What is precision? What is it used for? What is mantissa and what is mantissa used for? How to determine the range of float/double by their size? What is ± symbol (Plus-minus) used for? (i believe its positive/negative choice but what does that have to do with everything?),
Isn't there any brief and clean explanation you guys could provide me with?
I spent 600 years of trying to understand wikipedia. I failed tremendously.
What is precision?
It refers to how closely a binary floating point representation can represent a real value. Real values have infinite precision and infinite range. Digital values have finite range and precision. In practice a single-precision IEEE-754 can represent real values of a precision of 6 significant figures (decimal), while double-precision is good for 15 significant figures.
The practical effect of this for example is that a single precision value: 123456000.00 cannot be distinguished from say 123456001.00, but equally a value 0.00123456 can be represented.
What is it used for?
Precision is not used for anything other than to define a characteristic of a particular floating point representation.
What is mantissa and what is mantissa used for?
The term is not mentioned in the English language Wikipedia article, and is imprecise - in mathematics in general it has a different meaning that that used here.
The correct term is significand. For a decimal value 0.00123456 for example the significand is is 123456. 123456000.00 has exactly the same significand. Each of these values has the same significand but a different exponent. The exponent is a scaling factor which determines where the decimal point is (hence floating point).
Of course IEEE754 is a binary floating point representation not decimal, but for the same of explanation of the terms it is perhaps easier to use decimal.
How to determine the range of float/double by their size?
By the size alone you cannot; you need to know how many bits are assigned to the significand and how many bits are assigned to the exponent. In C however the range is defined by the macros FLT_MIN, FLT_MAX, DBL_MIN and DBL_MAX in the float.h header. Other characteristics of the implementations floating point representation are described there also.
Note that a specific compiler may not in fact use IEEE754, however that is the format used by most hardware FPU implementations, and the compiler will naturally follow that. For targets with no FPU (small embedded processors typically), other formats may be used.
What is ± symbol (Plus-minus) used for?
It simply means that the value given may be both positive or negative. It may refer to a specific value, or it may indicate a range. So ±n may refer to two discrete values -n or +n, or it may mean a range -n to +n. Context is everything! In this article it refers to discrete values +0, -0, +∞ and -∞.
There are 3 different components: sign, exponent, mantissa
Assuming that the exponent has only 2 Bits, 4 combinations are possible:
binary decimal
00 0
01 1
10 2
11 3
The represented floating-point value is 2exponent:
binary exponent-value
00 2^0 = 1
01 2^1 = 2
10 2^2 = 4
11 2^3 = 8
The range of the floating point value, results from the exponent. 2 bits => maximum value = 8.
The mantissa divide the range from a given exponent to the next higher exponent.
For example the exponent is 2 and the mantissa has one bit, then there are two values possible:
exponent-value mantissa-binary represented floating-point value
2 0 2
2 1 3
The represented floating-point value is 2exponent × (1 + m1×2-1 + m2×2-2 + m3×2-3 + …).
Here an example with a 3 bit mantissa:
exponent-value mantissa-binary represented floating-point value
2 000 2 * (1 ) = 2
2 001 2 * (1 + 2^-3) = 2,25
2 010 2 * (1 + 2^-2 ) = 2,5
2 011 2 * (1 + 2^-2 + 2^-3) = 2,75
2 100 2 * (1 + 2^-1 ) = 3
and so on…
The sign has only just one Bit:
0 -> positive value
1 -> negative value
In IEEE-754 a 32 bit floating-point data type has an 8 bit exponent (with a range from 2-127 to 2128) and a 23 bit mantissa.
1 10000010 01101000000000000000000
- 130 1,40625
The represented floating-point value for this is:
-1 × 2(130 – 127) × (1 + 2-2 + 2-3 + 2-5) = -11,25
Try it: http://www.h-schmidt.net/FloatConverter/IEEE754.html
I was looking at documentation that a number type in oracle db can store range from 10 raise to -130 to 10 raise to 126.
Was wondering how many positive numbers a field NUMBER(18) can store?
Integer numbers with up to 18 digits (Integers between -10^18+1 and 10^18-1)
According to Oracle documentation, the NUMBER datatype stores fixed and floating-point numbers. Optionally, you can also specify a precision (total number of digits) and scale (number of digits to the right of the decimal point):
NUMBER (precision, scale)
If no scale is specified, the scale is zero.
In your case, NUMBER(18), you specified a precision of 18 digits and did not specify any scale so 0 is used (no numbers after the decimal point).
According to the entry for decimal and numeric data types in SQL Server 2008 Books Online, precision is:
p (precision)
The maximum total number of decimal digits that can be stored, both to the left and to the right of the decimal point. The precision must be a value from 1 through the maximum precision of 38. The default precision is 18.
However, the second select below fails with "Arithmetic overflow error converting int to data type numeric."
SELECT CAST(123456789 as decimal(9,0))
SELECT CAST(123456789 as decimal(9,1))
see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa258832(SQL.80).aspx
decimal[(p[, s])]
p (precision) Specifies the maximum total number of decimal digits
that can be stored, both to the left
and to the right of the decimal point.
The precision must be a value from 1
through the maximum precision. The
maximum precision is 38. The default
precision is 18.
s (scale) Specifies the maximum number of decimal digits that can be
stored to the right of the decimal
point. Scale must be a value from 0
through p. Scale can be specified only
if precision is specified. The default
scale is 0; therefore, 0 <= s <= p.
Maximum storage sizes vary, based on
the precision.
when using: decimal(p,s), think of p as how many total digits (regardless of left or right of the decimal point) you want to store, and s as how many of those p digits should be to the right of the decimal point.
DECIMAL(10,5)= 12345.12345
DECIMAL(10,2)= 12345678.12
DECIMAL(10,10)= .1234567891
DECIMAL(11,10)= 1.1234567891
your sample code fails:
SELECT CAST(123456789 as decimal(9,1))
because:
9=precision (total number of digits to left and right of decimal)
1=scale (total number of digits to the right of the decimal)
(9-1)=8 (total digits to the left of the decimal)
and your value 123456789 requires 9 digits to the left of the decimal. you will need decimal(10,1) or just decimal(9,0)
Correct. Since you're doing decimal(9,1) that means you have 9 total digits, but the ,1 is reserving one of them for the right of the decimal place, so you can do at most 8 to the left and 1 to the right.
try
SELECT CAST(123456789 as decimal(10,1))