This has become more of a prominent problem as we've added more data
integrity checks in our code... We are getting errors like the following
from our debug output:

EMP ID: 3 Ledger balance mismatch - record: 116.1 Ledger: 116.1 diff:
1.52588e-05

record: float4
ledger: float4

diff = ledger - record

This is causing a large number of our commit transactions to abort
because we are basically checking the balance record of a ledger (in one
table) VS the last balance in that ledger (in another table) and it is
being flagged as not equal with the infinitesimal difference. We have
tried typecasting and that is not working. We are going to kludge this
to work by replacing the 'is equal to' operator with a subtract
operation compared with a small number. Needless to say, we would rather
not do it this way.

These are 2 servers that are having the same problem

Linux ims.rx.uga.edu 2.6.12-1.1381_FC3smp #1 SMP Fri Oct 21 04:03:26 EDT
2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Linux leave.forestry.uga.edu 2.6.9-1.667 #1 Tue Nov 2 14:41:25 EST 2004
i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

thanks for your attention to this

-Chito Lapena
webims.com
912-695-8076

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Chito Lapena <chito (AT) webims (DOT) com> writes:
If you are expecting exact results, you should be using an exact
datatype, ie numeric. Floating-point calculations are inherently
inexact ... *especially* with float4, which only has about six
significant digits at best.

regards, tom lane

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