"Peter Faulks" <pfaulks@...> wrote in message
news:20020409185552.67d3604e.peter@......

>
> And therefore rounding errors?
>
> eg: SELECT SUM(<a_numeric_column) WHERE .....

Nothing to do.
Here, precision is the total number of digits in the number. It's not
related to arithmetic rounding at all. From that "precision", some places
are reserved for the scale, that's the decimal places.
Any documentation you may read (SQL standard, IB documentation) uses
numeric(precision, scale)
decimal(precision, scale)

C.