Re: Precision of data types and functions

[Douglas McNaught <doug(at)mcnaught(dot)org>]

"Brandon Aiken" <BAiken(at)winemantech(dot)com> writes:

> I'm considering migrating our MySQL 4.1 database (barf!) to PostgreSQL 8
> or MySQL 5.  
>
> The guy who originally designed the system made all the number data
> FLOATs, even for currency items.  Unsurprisingly, we've noticed math
> errors resulting from some of the aggregate functions.  I've learned
> MySQL 5 stores numbers with the DECIMAL data type as text strings, and
> does math at 64-bit precision.  Where can I find information about how
> precise PostgreSQL 8 math is?

You probably want to use NUMERIC for currency values.  See:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/datatype.html#DATATYPE-NUMERIC-DECIMAL

-Doug