FLOAT Data Type
Description
The
FLOAT
data type is a subtype ofNUMBER
. It can be specified with or without precision, which has the same definition it has forNUMBER
and can range from 1 to 126. Scale cannot be specified but is interpreted from the data. (Oracle Language Reference Float Data Type)
Notes on arithmetic operations
Please be aware that every operation performed on numerical datatypes is internally stored as a Number. Furthermore, depending on the operation performed it is possible to incur an error related to how intermediate values are stored within Snowflake, for more information please check this post on Snowflake's post on intermediate numbers in Snowflake.
Sample Source Patterns
Please, consider the following table and its inserts for the examples below:
Float data type in Create Table
Oracle
Snowflake
FLOAT
There are no differences between Oracle and Snowflake regarding FLOAT data type without precision.
Oracle
Snowflake
FLOAT ( p )
Queries results may not be equivalent when the precision (p) is specified in theFLOAT
data type. There are small rounding differences.