How many digits can be stored for a number in SQL Server 2005?

Question

I have a number from an Oracle database of 47306832975095894070.85314746810624532. When I bring it into SQL Server, it certainly doesn't show that many digits. It shows as 4.73068329750959E+19, and the field is defined as FLOAT.

I think that probably includes all the significant digits, but I'm being asked if the number can be stored exactly as Oracle had it. Is there a another data type that will store ALL the digits? Is there a way in SQL Server 2005 to display the number not in exponential, but show all the digits stored?

Answer 1

Use decimal data type. decimal(p,s) - p is a precision value, s is a scale value.

Answer 2

instead of float, use Decimal(38,17). This should allow you to store the number with the same precision that you had in Oracle.

Answer 3

The equivalent of the NUMBER(p, s) Oracle datatype on Sql Server is the numeric(p, s) datatype. Note that the default values for p (precision) and s (scale) are not the same on both platforms.

On Sql Server, a float represents a floating point number that is a whole different, approximate representation of a number. On Oracle, the equivalent would be BINARY_DOUBLE.