DECIMAL (p,s) Fixed Point

In fixed-point numbers, DECIMAL(p,s), the decimal point is fixed at a specific place, regardless of the value of the number. When you specify a column of this type, you declare its precision (p) as the total number of digits that it can store, from 1 to 32. You declare its scale (s) as the total number of digits in the fractional part (that is, to the right of the decimal point).

All numbers with an absolute value less than 0.5 * 10-s have the value zero. The largest absolute value of a DECIMAL(p,s) data type that you can store without an overflow error is 10p-s -10-s. A DECIMAL column typically stores numbers with fractional parts that must be stored and displayed exactly (for example, rates or percentages). In an ANSI-compliant database, all DECIMAL numbers must have absolute values in the range 10-32 to 10+31.


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