set default precision on decimal type?

[Boot2TheHead]

This one cost me a solid half hour yesterday. I'm wondering why on
earth the default precision for a decimal type is 18,0. Maybe I'm
mistaken. A decimal datatype sort of implies that you'd want something
after the decimal!

Question is, can I set this database-wide? Like all new decimal
datatypes have a precision of 12,6 or something like that? I haven't
seen anything about this in the googling I have done...

[Roy Harvey]

Re: set default precision on decimal type?

I wouldn't expect that to be something that can be configured. As to
the default of (18,0) vs some other value, I would never allow a
default to be used so it doesn't strike me as a problem. It is so
much safer, and so simple, to always specify what you need explicitly
that I just can't get interested in the issue.

Roy

On 8 Dec 2006 09:34:18 -0800, "Boot2TheHe ad" <jcollum@gmail. com>
wrote:

>This one cost me a solid half hour yesterday. I'm wondering why on
>earth the default precision for a decimal type is 18,0. Maybe I'm
>mistaken. A decimal datatype sort of implies that you'd want something
>after the decimal!
>
>Question is, can I set this database-wide? Like all new decimal
>datatypes have a precision of 12,6 or something like that? I haven't
>seen anything about this in the googling I have done...

[David Portas]

Re: set default precision on decimal type?

Boot2TheHead wrote:

This one cost me a solid half hour yesterday. I'm wondering why on
earth the default precision for a decimal type is 18,0. Maybe I'm
mistaken. A decimal datatype sort of implies that you'd want something
after the decimal!
>
Question is, can I set this database-wide? Like all new decimal
datatypes have a precision of 12,6 or something like that? I haven't
seen anything about this in the googling I have done...

I think the real question is, why would you NOT want to specify the
precision and scale when you use DECIMAL? If it is really important to
you NOT to specify the precision and scale then create a user-defined
type for it (not something I would generally recommend though).

--
David Portas, SQL Server MVP

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--

[Erland Sommarskog]

Re: set default precision on decimal type?

Roy Harvey (roy_harvey@sne t.net) writes:

I wouldn't expect that to be something that can be configured. As to
the default of (18,0) vs some other value, I would never allow a
default to be used so it doesn't strike me as a problem. It is so
much safer, and so simple, to always specify what you need explicitly
that I just can't get interested in the issue.

Yes, I entirely agree. If only Sybase and/or Microsoft had agreed.
The defaults of decimal and the character data types are do no help
to the users, but a common source of error.


--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarsk og.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at

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