RE: Storing Numeric Values in the Database

Heh. You sound like an Oracle programmer. :-))

Paul Nelson
Office 512-392-2577
Cell 708-670-6978
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lance Gillespie
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 12:30 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Cc: Michael Emerson
Subject: RE: Storing Numeric Values in the Database

<Friday humor>

I store numerics fully spelled out in English.

1,235.27 becomes one thousand two hundred thirty five and twenty seven
one hundredths.

The overhead of a couple of stored procedures to translate when
arithmetic is required is a small price to pay for greater readability.

</Friday humor>


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 8:02 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Storing Numeric Values in the Database

Generally speaking, what is the current wisdom about storing numeric
data in the database? Do folks still prefer packed representation for
data with decimal positions? Zoned is a little easier on the eyes when
looking at a raw record, but it takes a few more bytes especially as the
fields get larger. And as far as I know RPG still likes to convert
things to packed when it reads a file unless you tell it not to. That
being the case is there still a performance issue these days?

We like zoned fields here, but I'm trying to address the issue from a
thorough technical standpoint. If you're trying to be as lean as
possible, you could argue that integers should be stored in binary,
although that has its own issues. Heck, an argument could be made that
you should store all data as integers with implied digits and decimal
positions.

What say you all?

Joe