11g Client - Inconsistencies at the 16th decimal place

Question

In TOAD, SQLPlus, & ODBC clients numbers returned from a query are correct (max 3 decimal places)
In Discoverer & from a report, the numbers are off at the 16th decimal place...
EG:
7.081 becomes 7.0810000000000004
7.090 becomes 7.0999999999999994 (which is exceptionally weird because the rounding doesn't work)
7.200 becomes 7.2000000000000002
Any idea what would cause this?
How can I query from SQLPlus (or TOAD) to confirm whether or not those extended decimal places actually exist in the table?

Answer 1

Alan3 wrote:
Maybe I should have added this little tidbit...Please be as verbose as possible (feasible). Show queries etc. - use copy and paste.
The particular table in question is an interface table that has been in place for 4+ years.
The columns in question are of data type NUMBER.
We just switched the PC that runs this interface to Win7 with an 11g client.Describe the interface. E.g. In what program language is it written?
Now we see the extended decimals with Discoverer (on any PC) and the interface report (an old report built from developer 6) as well, but not from SQL, etc...How is changing one pc client related to the Discoverer and Reports reports? Has the database server been upgraded also? (full version from select * from v$version; )
Do you see the same change for "old" data (from before the switch).
I want to know if there is a setting in SQLPlus or the DB client that limits the display of the decimal places that I can alter to determine if the extended decimals actually show up... (they shouldn't be there at all)Both sqlplus and db may affect the outcome, e.g.
SQL> desc test
Name                                      Null?    Type
A                                                  NUMBER
B                                                  NUMBER(38,5)
SQL> show numw
numwidth 10
SQL>
SQL> select * from test;
         A          B
     12345      12345
123456789  123456789
    123,45     123,45
123,456789  123,45679
     1,234      1,234
1,23456789    1,23457
6 rows selected.The same values was inserted to both columns of test. With scale = 5 for its datatype, B values are rounded (4th and 6th row).
SQL> set numw 5
SQL> select * from test;
    A     B
12345 12345
123,5 123,5
123,5 123,5
1,234 1,234
1,235 1,235
6 rows selected.The numwidth setting affects sqlplus formatting.
Edited by: orafad on Jan 5, 2011 9:44 PM