I've searched for it but i can't find a conclusive answer to my question...
I need to know what is the storage size of a number(p) field in Oracle.
Examples: NUMBER(1), NUMBER(3), NUMBER(8), NUMBER(10) etc...
I've searched for it but i can't find a conclusive answer to my question...
I need to know what is the storage size of a number(p) field in Oracle.
Examples: NUMBER(1), NUMBER(3), NUMBER(8), NUMBER(10) etc...
The storage used depends on the actual numeric value, as well as the column precision and scale of the column.
The Oracle 11gR2 concepts guide says:
Oracle Database stores numeric data in variable-length format. Each value is stored in scientific notation, with 1 byte used to store the exponent. The database uses up to 20 bytes to store the mantissa, which is the part of a floating-point number that contains its significant digits. Oracle Database does not store leading and trailing zeros.
The 10gR2 guide goes further:
Taking this into account, the column size in bytes for a particular numeric data value NUMBER(p), where p is the precision of a given value, can be calculated using the following formula:
ROUND((length(p)+s)/2))+1
where s equals zero if the number is positive, and s equals 1 if the number is negative.
Zero and positive and negative infinity (only generated on import from Version 5 Oracle databases) are stored using unique representations. Zero and negative infinity each require 1 byte; positive infinity requires 2 bytes.
If you have access to My Oracle Support, there is more information in note 1031902.6.
You can see the actual storage used with vsize
or dump
.
create table t42 (n number(10));
insert into t42 values (0);
insert into t42 values (1);
insert into t42 values (-1);
insert into t42 values (100);
insert into t42 values (999);
insert into t42 values (65535);
insert into t42 values (1234567890);
select n, vsize(n), dump(n)
from t42
order by n;
N VSIZE(N) DUMP(N)
------------ ---------- ---------------------------------
-1 3 Typ=2 Len=3: 62,100,102
0 1 Typ=2 Len=1: 128
1 2 Typ=2 Len=2: 193,2
100 2 Typ=2 Len=2: 194,2
999 3 Typ=2 Len=3: 194,10,100
65535 4 Typ=2 Len=4: 195,7,56,36
1234567890 6 Typ=2 Len=6: 197,13,35,57,79,91
Notice that the storage varies depending on the value, even though they are all in a number(10)
column, and that two 3-digit numbers can need different amounts of storage.
NUMBER
999...(38 9's) x10125
maximum value Can be represented to full 38-digit precision (the mantissa).
-999...(38 9's) x10125
minimum value Can be represented to full 38-digit precision (the mantissa).
Precision 38 significant digits ==> NUMBER(38) is the max
Refer here and also may be here
The number
data type in Oracle is a special data type that is variable length like varchar
. Then if you store the same data in number(5)
and number(20)
the storage is the same like declaring a column as varchar(100)
and varchar(200)
.
So specifying the p parameter in number(p,s)
has no effect on storage size and is only for applying constraint on the data. But specifying the s parameter can reduce the size by rounding the data.
the minimum storage size of number data type is 1 byte and the maximum is 21 bytes. So if you do not want to apply constraint then use number
data type without p parameter.