[Koha] A quick question on biblioitems.dewey field's datatype

[Bob Seidl]

Indranil Das Gupta wrote:

>On Sun, 2004-08-22 at 22:49, MJ Ray wrote:
>  
>
>>On 2004-08-22 12:06:33 +0100 Indranil Das Gupta <indradg at icbic.com> 
>>wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Why is the biblioitems.dewey field set to double(8,6) and not to, say
>>>varchar(15) or something like that?
>>>      
>>>
>>I think quite a few developers have been wondering that recently, too. 
>>Unless there's a killer reason to keep it numeric, I expect it to 
>>change in 2.1.* before much longer.
>>    
>>
>
>Thanks for the info. At my deployment site, use of double precision
>datatype was leading to the decimal part of the stored dewey number
>being padded with extra zeros. And this was reflecting a wrong value in
>the OPAC interface.
>
>So, I simply changed the fieldtype to varchar(15) and rerun
>misc/rebuildnonmarc.pl. Now, the dewey value is being correctly stored
>in biblioitems.dewey and properly displayed in the OPAC.
>
>So far, I haven't noticed any inconsistency due to the change.
>
>cheers,
>-indra.
>
>
>
>  
>
    Not knowing the language very well, and not knowing the dewey 
decimal system very well, I can nonetheless venture a guess based upon 
my experience in other computer areas.
    If the number of characters after the decimal point ever changes, 
then it will not sort properly.  If the field is changed to varchar, I 
would make sure to put in some sort of edit mask / edit check to verfy 
the number of characters after the decimal point.  If there are less 
than some minimal number, space fill to the right.

Bob