Introduction to Oracle NUMBER Data Type

The NUMBER data type is a fundamental data type in the Oracle database used to represent numerical data. In the Oracle database, the NUMBER data type is widely used. This article will introduce the syntax, use cases, examples, and conclusion of the NUMBER data type.

Syntax

In the Oracle database, the NUMBER keyword is used to declare variables or columns of the NUMBER data type, and the syntax format is as follows:

NUMBER(precision, scale)

Where precision is the precision of the number, which is the total length of the number, ranging from 1 to 38. scale is the number of digits after the decimal point, ranging from -84 to 127. If scale is not specified, it defaults to 0.

Use Cases

The NUMBER data type is widely used in the Oracle database for numerical calculations, currency calculations, measurements, and other purposes. Additionally, the NUMBER data type plays an important role in data warehousing and business intelligence applications.

Examples

Example 1

Assume we have a table called employees that contains information about employee salaries. Now we want to query the average salary of all employees.

SELECT AVG(salary) as avg_salary FROM employees;

By executing the above SQL statement, we will get the average salary of all employees. The data type of the salary column is NUMBER.

Example 2

Now we have a requirement to calculate the sum of a sequence of numbers. We can achieve this with the following SQL statement:

SELECT SUM(column1) as sum_result FROM table1;

Where column1 is of data type NUMBER, and table1 is a table that contains the column1 column.

Conclusion

In the Oracle database, the NUMBER data type is a commonly used data type. It is widely used for numerical calculations, currency calculations, measurements, and other purposes. If you need to store numerical data in Oracle database, the NUMBER data type is a good choice.