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The precision represents the number of significant digits that are stored for values, and the scale represents the number of digits that can be stored following the decimal point.
Decimal Data Type. The decimal data type is an exact numeric data type defined by its precision (total number of digits) and scale (number of digits to the right of the decimal point).
NUMERIC must be exactly as precise as it is defined — so if you define 4 decimal places to the left of the decimal point and 4 decimal places to the right of it, the DB must always store 4 + 4 decimal places, no more, no less.
Numeric precision refers to the maximum number of digits that are present in the number.
ie 1234567.89 has a precision of 9
Numeric scale refers to the maximum number of decimal places
ie 123456.789 has a scale of 3
Thus the maximum allowed value for decimal(5,2) is 999.99
Precision of a number is the number of digits.
Scale of a number is the number of digits after the decimal point.
What is generally implied when setting precision and scale on field definition is that they represent maximum values.
Example, a decimal field defined with precision=5 and scale=2 would allow the following values:
123.45 (p=5,s=2)12.34 (p=4,s=2)12345 (p=5,s=0)123.4 (p=4,s=1)0 (p=0,s=0)The following values are not allowed or would cause a data loss:
12.345 (p=5,s=3) => could be truncated into 12.35 (p=4,s=2)1234.56 (p=6,s=2) => could be truncated into 1234.6 (p=5,s=1)123.456 (p=6,s=3) => could be truncated into 123.46 (p=5,s=2)123450 (p=6,s=0) => out of rangeNote that the range is generally defined by the precision: |value| < 10^p ...
Precision, Scale, and Length in the SQL Server 2000 documentation reads:
Precision is the number of digits in a number. Scale is the number of digits to the right of the decimal point in a number. For example, the number 123.45 has a precision of 5 and a scale of 2.
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