>> There are practical applications, eg, 1024-bit keys are fairly common
>> objects in cryptography these days, and that equates to about 10^308.
>> I don't really foresee anyone trying to run crypto algorithms with SQL
>> NUMERIC arithmetic, though ...
>
> 2046 bit keys are becoming more common. However, math using these keys
> is
> usually done modulo a product of two primes and there are ways of
> doing the
> calculations that are going to be much faster than doing them the way
> Postgres does. So it is unlikely that anyone would be using Postgres'
> numeric
> type to do this in any case.
Nonetheless, the fact that people can think of practical applications
for numbers whose length is easily within a factor of two of the
proposed limitation makes me squeamish about it being shrunk. Also, I
would say the same arguments about doing math with NUMERICs suggest
that saving a few byes in representation is not a big deal. On the few
occasions where I have used NUMERICs, I didn't care about stuff like
that.
For what it's worth.
- John D. Burger
MITRE
