"Arithmetic Overflow" error getting AVG of field - how to solve?

Question

After some research, it appears that the problem is in a precision mis-match between Oracle floats and .NET floats, and that OracleDecimal should be used. I'm just using C# ExecuteScalar to get an average out of a table's field.
Can someone show me a concrete-but-simple example of how to get an average w/o getting Arithmetic Overflow?
thanks much,
cdj

Answer 1

Hi,
If you want to use ExecuteScalar, you could wrap the AVG call with a call to ROUND or TRUNC to keep it under 28 digits. for example
select round(1/3,28) from dual;
Here's an example that gets 38 digits without overflow.
Hope it helps,
Greg
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Oracle.DataAccess.Client;
using Oracle.DataAccess.Types;
class Program
static void Main(string[] args)
using (OracleConnection con = new OracleConnection())
con.ConnectionString = "user id=scott;password=tiger;data source=orcl";
con.Open();
using (OracleCommand cmd = new OracleCommand())
cmd.CommandText = "select 1/3 from dual";
cmd.Connection = con;
using (OracleDataReader rdr = cmd.ExecuteReader())
while (rdr.Read())
Console.WriteLine(rdr.GetOracleDecimal(0).ToString());
}