Issue1499

The current postgresql data handler does a convertion from BigDecimal to
float for DECIMAL/NUMERIC columns, which is wrong since we will likely
lost precision in the process.

Fixed in 6937

I mean, in r6937

This might break existing code, since floats cannot be directly combined
with Decimals. So for example, I can't do this:

>>> Decimal("0.5") * 0.5
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for *: 'Decimal' and 'float'

Perhaps we can make this a configuration setting in the connection?

Also, this should be applied to other data handlers like Oracle.

Good points. 

On the other hand, the old behavior is broken IMHO. I lean towards
giving an option for retaining the old behavior but defaulting at the
new one.

So, people who are using the PostgresqlDataHandler and want to retain
the old behaviour would have to do something like:

connection.datahandler = PostgresqlDataHanlder(connection.datahandler,
returnFloatForDecimals=True)

Hi leanardo, This also happens with MySQL (ver GA 5.1, conector/J 5.1.XX). Should we post a new ticket for it?

As per joseflores update, this does not impact only Postgres as the title suggests.  This impacts generic handler (DataHandler.java line 254) and is probably in other handlers (like MySQL too).

We should really fix this (breaking the old behavior) for all other databases, and make the behavior the default. 2.6 would be a great time to do this

In case anyone else hits this I implemented a driver that returns decimal types. http://code.google.com/p/jyjdbc/ The driver is not by any means complete but decimals work (which was what I needed).

Given that clach04 fixed this in jyjdbc AND we plan to switch out zxJDBC to jyjdbc for beta 4, we should have this finally fixed.

Deferred to 2.7.1 or later