[Haskell-cafe] custom SQL-to-Haskell type conversion in HDBC

[Richard O'Keefe]

On 21/08/2011, at 3:01 AM, Henry House wrote:
> No, I want a data type in Haskell that mirrors the data type in the
> RDBMS, not conversion of RDBMS fixed-precision data into something else
> (Rational). If the data in the RDBMS represented a rational number of
> arbitrary precision, then they would have been stored in the RDBMS as a
> rational data type (assuming that the database was designed sensibly, of
> course).

How?  There is no rational data type in standard SQL.
"Arbitrary precision" really does not fit the classic SQL model of
fixed size columns very well.

> The limitations of the SQL backend are deliberately chosen (no
> one is forced to use fixed-precision numeric data types in PostgreSQL;
> arbitrary-precision numeric is available as well as a true rational with
> a contrib module).

Can you talk to the designer of the data base in question?
Do you know whether they were interested in exploiting features of
PostgreSQL or whether they were interested in portability?
Are you certain that 2.00 will always be reported as "2.00" and
never as "2.0"?