Embedded SQL accepts the following declarations of numeric variables:

Any data items in the numeric category may be used to assign and receive Ingres numeric data in database tables and forms. However, only non‑scaled COMP, COMP‑3, and DISPLAY items of 10 digit positions or less can be used to specify simple numeric objects, such as table field row numbers. Generally, you should use COMP data items with no scaling to interact with Ingres integer‑valued objects, since the internal format of COMP data is compatible with Ingres integer data. Similarly, COMP‑1 and COMP‑2 data items are compatible with Ingres floating-point data.

Although Ingres will effect the necessary conversions between all numeric data types, the use of DISPLAY and COMP‑3 scaled data items could result in the loss of some precision. However, this does not occur if you are using COMP‑3 to store decimals. For more information on type conversion, see Data Type Conversion (see page Data Type Conversion) in this chapter.