| From: | Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> | 
|---|---|
| To: | Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> | 
| Cc: | Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, PostgreSQL-general <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org> | 
| Subject: | Re: Reduce NUMERIC size by 2 bytes, reduce max length to 508 digits | 
| Date: | 2005-12-03 00:37:49 | 
| Message-ID: | 10154.1133570269@sss.pgh.pa.us | 
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| Lists: | pgsql-general pgsql-hackers pgsql-patches | 
I wrote:
> The actual effective limit on NUMERIC is presently 10^128K, which is
> probably enough to count the femtoseconds remaining until the heat death
> of the universe, and then multiply that by the number of elementary
> particles therein ;-).
Should have done my research first. A little googling says that
* The total number of particles in the universe has been
  variously estimated at numbers from 10^72 up to 10^87.
* The time to the heat death of the universe has been estimated at
  10^200 years (and if there's one significant digit in that exponent
  I'd be surprised...)
So the product I fancifully mentioned would weigh in somewhere around
10^300, and thus be *well* within the capability of even the proposed
restricted numeric format.
regards, tom lane
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