Number data type scale (Oracle, JDBC)

Sybrand Bakker · *nix forums Guru Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Posts: 1766

On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 16:57:22 +0100, Tomasz Majchrzak
<tomekem@poczta.fm> wrote:

Tomasz Majchrzak · *nix forums beginner Joined: 09 Feb 2005 Posts: 2

Hi,

I have a table created with statement:

CREATE TABLE test (field NUMBER);

I inserted one value into it:

INSERT INTO test VALUES (4);

According to Oracle documentation:

------------------------------------------------------------
column_name NUMBER (precision, scale)

If a precision is not specified, the column stores values as given.
If no scale is specified, the scale is zero.
------------------------------------------------------------

I checked in database dictionary - DATA_LENGTH for column is set to NULL.
However when I retrieve this data from database with JDBC, getScale()
method of ResultSetMetaData class returns -127 which indicates double
value.

When I run the same scenario against second database (almost similar environment).
everything is fine - so JDBC driver is working properly.

What is the cause of such result? Is there an initialization parameter that
determines default number data type scale?

My environment: Oracle 9.2, Red Hat Linux 9 with recompiled kernel (2.4.2 Cool

.

Thanks for any help,

Tomek

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