PostgreSQL Reference Manual - Volume 1 - SQL Language Reference by The PostgreSQL Global Development Group Paperback (6"x9"), 716 pages ISBN 0954612027 RRP £32.00 ($49.95) Sales of this book support the PostgreSQL project! Get a printed copy>>>

PostgreSQL Reference Manual Volume 1 Buy the book here! >>> learn more

6.1.2 Arbitrary Precision Numbers

The type numeric can store numbers with up to 1000 digits of precision and perform calculations exactly. It is especially recommended for storing monetary amounts and other quantities where exactness is required. However, arithmetic on numeric values is very slow compared to the integer types, or to the floating-point types described in the next section.

In what follows we use these terms: The scale of a numeric is the count of decimal digits in the fractional part, to the right of the decimal point. The precision of a numeric is the total count of significant digits in the whole number, that is, the number of digits to both sides of the decimal point. So the number 23.5141 has a precision of 6 and a scale of 4. Integers can be considered to have a scale of zero.

Both the maximum precision and the maximum scale of a numeric column can be configured. To declare a column of type numeric use the syntax

NUMERIC(precision, scale)

The precision must be positive, the scale zero or positive. Alternatively,

NUMERIC(precision)

selects a scale of 0. Specifying

NUMERIC

without any precision or scale creates a column in which numeric values of any precision and scale can be stored, up to the implementation limit on precision. A column of this kind will not coerce input values to any particular scale, whereas numeric columns with a declared scale will coerce input values to that scale. (The SQL standard requires a default scale of 0, i.e., coercion to integer precision. We find this a bit useless. If you're concerned about portability, always specify the precision and scale explicitly.)

If the scale of a value to be stored is greater than the declared scale of the column, the system will round the value to the specified number of fractional digits. Then, if the number of digits to the left of the decimal point exceeds the declared precision minus the declared scale, an error is raised.

Numeric values are physically stored without any extra leading or trailing zeroes. Thus, the declared precision and scale of a column are maximums, not fixed allocations. (In this sense the numeric type is more akin to varchar(n) than to char(n).) The actual storage requirement is two bytes for each group of four decimal digits, plus eight bytes overhead.

In addition to ordinary numeric values, the numeric type allows the special value NaN, meaning “not-a-number”. Any operation on NaN yields another NaN. When writing this value as a constant in a SQL command, you must put quotes around it, for example UPDATE table SET x = 'NaN'. On input, the string NaN is recognized in a case-insensitive manner.

The types decimal and numeric are equivalent. Both types are part of the SQL standard.