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<chapter id="datatype">

trailing zeroes. Thus, the declared precision and scale of a column

are maximums, not fixed allocations. (In this sense the <type>numeric</>

type is more akin to <type>varchar(<replaceable>n</>)</type>

than to <type>char(<replaceable>n</>)</type>.)

than to <type>char(<replaceable>n</>)</type>.) The actual storage

requirement is two bytes for each group of four decimal digits,

plus eight bytes overhead.

</para>

<para>