brewmanz (10/13/2008)
T
It always is correct WITH THIS SET OF DATA. Try adding a couple of zero(e)s at the end of each of the 3 numbers and watch "Msg 8115, Level 16, State 6, Line 12 - Arithmetic overflow error converting float to data type numeric." appear.
The FLOAT still works, and produces even stranger (but predictable) results of 1000164 and 1000192.
I prefer an overflow error instead of wrong data. You can specify a precision of 38 digits
From BOL:
Numeric data types that have fixed precision and scale.
decimal[ (p[ , s] )] and numeric[ (p[ , s] )]
Fixed precision and scale numbers. When maximum precision is used, valid values are from - 10^38 +1 through 10^38 - 1. The SQL-92 synonyms for decimal are dec and dec(p, s). numeric is functionally equivalent to decimal.
p (precision)
The maximum total number of decimal digits that can be stored, both to the left and to the right of the decimal point. The precision must be a value from 1 through the maximum precision of 38. The default precision is 18.
s (scale)
The maximum number of decimal digits that can be stored to the right of the decimal point. Scale must be a value from 0 through p. Scale can be specified only if precision is specified. The default scale is 0; therefore, 0 <= s <= p. Maximum storage sizes vary, based on the precision.