SQL Kiwi (1/4/2012)
Frank,My prior post was written before I saw your latest, so it wasn't aimed at the points you raised. I'm going to decline getting into a debate about whether DECIMAL(38,20) is common or not (though I do work at a hedge fund right now, and we use it in a couple of places, though most stuff uses lower numbers, and floats (double precision) are also common), because that discussion generally goes nowhere productive fast. BTW 11.9.2 means nothing to me, just so you know 🙂
G'day Paul, No problems about the uses (or not) - I would guess in many FM situations these days computation may well be done outside the db and simply stored (thin) ... reducing the "risk" this QOTD will materialise. A recent engagement of mine saw the database sproc side was fat with lots of number crunching for numeric datatypes. Of course in risk rather than accounting float/double may well be good enough.
11.9.2 is Sybase ASE - which is the oldest version that I can lay hands on as in indicator of the common code base that became SQL Server and I was curious to see if it also (mis)behaved. Given it didn't it seems the 6 decimal minima is a Redmond specific enhancement.