> if you assign 123.456 (123,456 for those who
> didn't go to school in the US) to a numeric (9, 3)
> column, what is stored is 123456. The column definition
> includes a scale of -3, so the database considers the
> value to be 123456 * .001.
>
> The scaled integer is a nuisance for C programmers
> (among others... I think only COBOL knows about that
> type intrinsically) because you have to pass the scale
> as well as the value to your UDF or program. But then,
> you should be passing a descriptor in any case, since
> that's the only way to handle nulls.

so u pass 123456 in one var (intcomponent) and another .001 in a second
variable (decimal component), and just by simply separating them out
(converting one into a string then back to an integer (intcomponent), and
reading out the decimal positionand converting it to a scale?, and what is a
descriptor?