From: Date: December 3 2003 8:24am
Subject: Re: Money data type in MySQL?
List-Archive: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/154921
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At 02:03 2003-12-03, David Garamond wrote:
>What do people recommend for storing money amounts? I've seen people use 
>NUMERIC(18,3) and other use NUMERIC(18,4). Which one is more appropriate 
>and why? This is considering various existing currencies, some having low 
>rates (like IDR, in which you can have large amount up to hundreds of 
>trillions) and some high rates (like USD, in which you can have small 
>amount like 0.1 cent). Are there places/industries which involve values 
>lower than 0.1 cent?

Off the top of my head: currency trading.


>And what about 'factor' field in currency conversion table? Should I use 
>FLOAT, or DOUBLE (do we need 15-16 digit precision?) or NUMERIC (exact 
>numbers).

It _really_ depends on Your/ Your application needs. I'd hazard a guess 
that for most situations FLOAT should do just fine.

>The factor should range between 1E-3 (e.g. converting IDR to USD) to 1E4 
>(e.g. converting IDR to pounds/euros).
>
>--
>dave
>
>
>
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