On Thu, Nov 03, 2005 at 10:32:03AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> I'd feel a lot happier about this if we could keep the dynamic range
> up to, say, 10^512 so that it's still true that NUMERIC can be a
> universal parse-time representation. That would also make it even
> more unlikely that anyone would complain about loss of functionality.
Would it be feasable to have a type that satisfies that constraint but
isn't generally intended for on-disk use? My thought is that this new
type would be used mostly for casting purposes. Kind of like the
UNKNOWNNUMBER but easier to do since it'd just be another type. (BTW,
I'm not suggesting that we disallow un-disk storage of the type, only
discourage it unless someone really, really needs an absurd number of
digits).
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby@pervasive.com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461