CURRENT PRECISION special register

CURRENT PRECISION specifies the rules to be used when both operands in a decimal operation have precisions of 15 or less.

The data type of the register is CHAR(5).

Valid values for the CURRENT PRECISION special register include 'DEC15', 'DEC31', or 'Dpp.s' where 'pp' is either 15 or 31 and 's' is a number in the range 1–9. DEC15 specifies the rules that do not allow a precision greater than 15 digits, and DEC31 specifies the rules that allow a precision of up to 31 digits. The rules for DEC31 are always used if either operand has a precision greater than 15. If the form 'Dpp.s' is used, 'pp' represents the precision that will be used as the rules where DEC15 and DEC31 rules are used, and 's' represents the minimum divide scale to use for division operations. The separator used in the form 'Dpp.s' can be either the '.' or the ',' character, regardless of the setting of the default decimal point.

The initial value of CURRENT PRECISION is determined by the value of field DECIMAL ARITHMETIC on installation panel DSNTIP4. The default for the initial value is DEC15 unless your installation has changed it to be DEC31 by modifying the value in that field. The initial value of CURRENT PRECISION in a user-defined function or stored procedure is inherited according to the rules in Table 1.

You can change the value of the register by executing the statement SET CURRENT PRECISION.

CURRENT PRECISION only affects dynamic SQL. When an SQL statement is dynamically prepared and the value of CURRENT PRECISION is DEC15 or D15.s, where 's' is a number in the range 1–9, DEC15 rules will apply. When an SQL statement is dynamically prepared and the value of CURRENT PRECISION is DEC31 or D31.s, where 's' is a number in the range 1–9, DEC31 rules will apply. Preparation of a statement with DEC31 instead of DEC15 is more likely to result in an error, especially for division operations. Specification of CURRENT PRECISION in the form 'Dpp.s' where 'pp' is either 15 or 31 and 's' represents the minimum divide scale, will in some cases make division errors less likely when 'pp' is set to 31. For more information, see Arithmetic with two decimal operands.

Example 1: Set CURRENT PRECISION so that subsequent statements that are prepared use DEC31 rules for decimal arithmetic:

   SET CURRENT PRECISION = 'DEC31';

Example 2: Set CURRENT PRECISION so that subsequent statements that are prepared use DEC31 rules for decimal arithmetic with a minimum divide scale of 3:

   SET CURRENT PRECISION = 'D31.3';