TL;DR: pgjdbc 9.2-1001+ sends floats as binary by default which causes the conversion issue at the database side.
The workaround is to add binaryTransferDisable=700,701 driver connection property (the ids are for FLOAT4 and FLOAT4_ARRAY)
OP upgraded from 9.1-901 to 42.2.5 which explains the difference.
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Vladimir> initial packet, then it upgrades to extra_float_digist=3 in case server
Vladimir> version is 9.0+
Tom>Hmm, but it's done that for a long while, no?'
And it happens to be exactly the version mentioned in the first mail.
It looks like the interesting change is as follows.
9.1-901 always used bindLiteral(parameterIndex, Float.toString(x), Oid.FLOAT8); if client uses setFloat(...) (which is exactly the call in the initial mail).
In other words, it sent the value as a string, and Java converts 1234567f as 1234567, so the value survived.
Don't ask me why the driver used FLOAT8 for sending float4 data :) I bet it was made to workaround precision loss issues like we see now.
9.2-1001 was released on 2012-10-31 and it introduced binary bind for certain primitives (see
so the driver sends float4 as binary, and the database can't convert it to numeric anymore.
Vladimir