What is the default Precision and Scale for a Number in Oracle?

Question

When creating a column of type NUMBER in Oracle, you have the option of not specifying a precision or scale. What do these default do if you don\'t specify them?

Answer 1

Oracle stores numbers in the following way: 1 byte for power, 1 byte for the first significand digit (that is one before the separator), the rest for the other digits.

By digits here Oracle means centesimal digits (i. e. base 100)

SQL> INSERT INTO t_numtest VALUES (LPAD('9', 125, '9'))
  2  /

1 row inserted

SQL> INSERT INTO t_numtest VALUES (LPAD('7', 125, '7'))
  2  /

1 row inserted

SQL> INSERT INTO t_numtest VALUES (LPAD('9', 126, '9'))
  2  /

INSERT INTO t_numtest VALUES (LPAD('9', 126, '9'))

ORA-01426: numeric overflow

SQL> SELECT DUMP(num) FROM t_numtest;

DUMP(NUM)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Typ=2 Len=2: 255,11
Typ=2 Len=21: 255,8,78,78,78,78,78,78,78,78,78,78,78,78,78,78,78,78,78,78,79

As we can see, the maximal number here is 7.(7) * 10^124, and he have 19 centesimal digits for precision, or 38 decimal digits.