DSXchange

Hello,

I have created a dummy job to test and demonstrate the following behavior (with no other logic to complicate things) and am hoping someone can explain the behavior that I am experiencing.

I have two Decimal(16,15) values coming in from a text file that I need to multiply together, and need a full Decimal(16,15) value output. (We are a financial organization, so the highest accuracy is important, which is why we need the full 15 decimal places.)



In the transform, if I perform any type of multiplication against the 15-decimal number, the result is automatically rounded to 10 decimal places. WHY? This occurs when multiplying the two 15-decimal numbers together or even when just multiplying the 15-decimal number by 1.

For example:

0.888888888888888 * 0.222222222222222 = 0.197530864200000 <---It is automatically rounded to 10...Should come out to be 0.197530864197530
or
0.888888888888888 * 1 = 0.888888888900000 <---Should come out to be 0.888888888888888




The only way that i have found it to work is to convert both values to a DFloat, performing the multiplication, and then convert back to decimal.

Can someone tell me why it works this way?


***** SAMPLE formulas and Output: *****

Input Data:

Field1=0.888888888888888 Data type is: Decimal(16,15)
Field2=0.222222222222222 Data type is: Decimal(16,15)

Output field is also Decimal(16,15)



DecimalToDFloat(Input.Field1,"fix_zero") * Input.Field2
= 0.197530864200000
DecimalToDFloat(Input.Field1,"fix_zero") * DecimalToDFloat(Input.Field2,"fix_zero")
= 0.197530864200000
DFloatToDecimal(DecimalToDFloat(Input.Field1,"fix_zero") * DecimalToDFloat(Input.Field2,"fix_zero"))
= 0.197530864197530 *****WORKS******
DFloatToDecimal(DecimalToDFloat(Input.Field1,"fix_zero")) * DFloatToDecimal(DecimalToDFloat(Input.Field2,"fix_zero"))
= 0.197530864200000

Input.Field1 * 1
= 0.888888888900000
DecimalToDFloat(Input.Field1,"fix_zero") * 1
= 0.888888888900000
DecimalToDFloat(Input.Field1,"fix_zero") * DecimalToDFloat(1,"fix_zero")
= 0.888888888900000
DFloatToDecimal(DecimalToDFloat(Input.Field1,"fix_zero") * DecimalToDFloat(1,"fix_zero"))
= 0.888888888888888 *****WORKS******
DFloatToDecimal(DecimalToDFloat(Input.Field1,"fix_zero")) * DFloatToDecimal(DecimalToDFloat(1,"fix_zero"))
= 0.888888888900000



Thank you!

What (environment variable) settings do you have to govern precision of intermediate results in decimal calculations?

Thank you, thank you, thank you! That little nudge in the right direction was all that I needed.

I didn't know that there were environment variables in Admin that affected data sizes. I looked and saw the following environment variable:

APT_DECIMAL_INTERM_SCALE Default scale for decimal intermediate variables

It was in fact set to 10 (default). I changed it to 15 and it fixed the issue!

Thanks,
David