Money, Decimal or Numeric for Currency Columns

Question

I am creating a SQL table to hold transactions:

create table dbo.TRANSACTIONS
(
  Id int identity not null,
  Amount money not null
);

For currency (I am using euros) should I use money, decimal, or numeric?

I have seen the three being applied to currency columns so I am not sure anymore.

Money would be the obvious choice ... But I have seen decimal and numeric to.

By the way, I am using SQL Server 2012.

Thank You

Answer 1

First of all, Decimal and Numeric have the same functionality (MSDN info about it)

To answer the new question money VS decimal, there is already a Stackoverflow question about it: Should you choose the MONEY or DECIMAL(x,y) datatypes in SQL Server? - the short answer was:

Never ever should you use money it is not precise and it is pure garbage, always use decimal/numeric

by SQLMenace

Answer 2

Decimal and Numeric are for almost all purposes, equivalent

Money is not a standard Sql type, and there may be other reasons to avoid it as well.

So choose an appropriate scale and precision and use DECIMAL.

Re : DECIMAL(19,4) vs (20,4)

The precision vs storage table here sums things up.

19,4 will store a value of 999 999 999 999 999.9999, at a cost of 9 bytes. A precision of 20 would require 13 bytes, which IMO would be a waste unless you needed the extra precision (in which case you can go to a precision of 28 with the same storage).

Also, for the same 9 bytes, you could also use e.g. 19,2, which will store 99 999 999 999 999 999.99