RDBPROD: Floating Point Data and Rounding Errors (Doc ID 65318.1)

Last updated on APRIL 16, 2024

Applies to:

Oracle Rdb Server on OpenVMS - Version 6.0 and later
HP OpenVMS VAX
HP OpenVMS Itanium
HP OpenVMS Alpha

Discuss floating point data and rounding errors.

Oracle Rdb uses floating point datatypes for all division operations. Beginning in Oracle Rdb 7.2.5.0, DOUBLE PRECISION results are produced. In prior versions, divide operations that involved small numeric values (TINYINT, SMALLINT, and short integer literals) resulted in REAL results (single precision) with some loss of accuracy.

Floating point arithmetic is described in detail at the following web sites:

What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic
Floating point, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
What Every Programmer Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic or Why don’t my numbers add up?

This information applies to anyone viewing the results of floating point arithmetic.

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