Message-ID: <4838.63.118.86.10.1176836034.squirrel@www.88thstreet.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 14:53:54 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Floating point type to store numbers
From: "Radhika Sambamurti" <radhika@88thstreet.com>
To: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Reply-To: radhika@88thstreet.com
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Hi,
I am currently using Postgresql to maintain an application which is used
for trading and back office operations. Currently our monetary fields are
stored in Varchar. I am finding a huge CPU utilization while converting
from varchar to float. I think for reasons unknown to me, we originally
stored $ amounts and rates in varchar. I am planning to convert our tables
that hold money fields and rates from varchar to float. I do not want to
convert to numeric because numeric is a special string type.

The question is: how accurate is floating point numbers in Postgres. We
are using 7.4 soon to be moving to 8.2.
I need the accuracy to about 6 decimal points. I have read that floating
points can convert to numbers in accurately.

Thank you.
Radhika


-- 
It is all a matter of perspective. You choose your view by choosing where
to stand.
Larry Wall
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