Which number takes more space in an Oracle row?

So, which number takes more bytes inside an Oracle row?

A: 123

B:  1000000000000000000000000000000000000

And the correct answer is … (drumroll) … A! The “big” number 1000000000000000000000000000000000000 actually takes less space than the “small” 123!

Let’s verify this:

SQL> select vsize(123) A, vsize(1000000000000000000000000000000000000) B from dual;

         A          B
---------- ----------
         3          2

WTF? Why does such a small number 123 take more space than  1000000000000000000000000000000000000 ?

Well, the answer lies in how Oracle stores numbers. Oracle NUMBER datatype doesn’t store numbers in their platform-native integer format. Oracle uses it’s own format which stores numbers in scientific notation, in exponent-mantissa form. More details about this here.

You can use the DUMP sql function to see the actual binary value of the number data stored:

select dump(123) from dual;

DUMP(123)
---------------------
Typ=2 Len=3: 194,2,24

SQL> select dump(1000000000000000000000000000000000000) from dual;

DUMP(10000000000000
-------------------
Typ=2 Len=2: Typ=2 Len=2: 211,2

So, although the number 1000000000000000000000000000000000000 is bigger than 123, when stored in base-10 exponent form, it really carries much less information in it than 123 (1 x 10^36 vs 123 x 10^0). Oracle doesn’t need many bits for keeping the precision of this large value as it happens to be a power of 10.

See what happens when I store a number only slightly bigger or smaller than the original large number, now the stored number requires much more storage for keeping the required precision:

SQL> select dump(1000000000000000000000000000000000000+1) from dual;

DUMP(1000000000000000000000000000000000000+1)
-------------------------------------------------------
Typ=2 Len=20: 211,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2

SQL> select dump(1000000000000000000000000000000000000-1) from dual;

DUMP(1000000000000000000000000000000000000-1)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Typ=2 Len=19: 210,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100,100