decimal and numeric (Transact-SQL)

Numeric data types that have fixed precision and scale.

  • decimal[ **(**p[ **,**s] )] and numeric[ **(**p[ **,**s] )]
    Fixed precision and scale numbers. When maximum precision is used, valid values are from - 10^38 +1 through 10^38 - 1. The SQL-92 synonyms for decimal are dec and dec(p, s). numeric is functionally equivalent to decimal.
  • p (precision)
    The maximum total number of decimal digits that can be stored, both to the left and to the right of the decimal point. The precision must be a value from 1 through the maximum precision of 38. The default precision is 18.
  • s (scale)
    The maximum number of decimal digits that can be stored to the right of the decimal point. Scale must be a value from 0 through p. Scale can be specified only if precision is specified. The default scale is 0; therefore, 0 <= s <= p. Maximum storage sizes vary, based on the precision.

    Precision Storage bytes

    1 - 9

    5

    10-19

    9

    20-28

    13

    29-38

    17

See Also

Reference

ALTER TABLE (Transact-SQL)
CAST and CONVERT (Transact-SQL)
CREATE TABLE (Transact-SQL)
Data Types (Transact-SQL)
DECLARE @local\_variable (Transact-SQL)
DELETE (Transact-SQL)
INSERT (Transact-SQL)
SET @local\_variable (Transact-SQL)
UPDATE (Transact-SQL)

Other Resources

Data Type Conversion (Database Engine)
Using the SQL Server Service Startup Options

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance