Re: Dealing with number formats when server and client are different locales

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Lane [mailto:tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us]
Sent: 06 September 2017 15:49
To: Rob Northcott <Rob(dot)Northcott(at)compilator(dot)com>
Cc: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Dealing with number formats when server and client are different locales

Rob Northcott <Rob(dot)Northcott(at)compilator(dot)com> writes:
> The problem we've got is that our app (running on PCs) generates
> commands to send to the SQL server, such as UPDATE customers SET cus_balance = 10.4 WHERE cus_key = 'A001'
> This has been working historically because the clients were always UK-based. Now some users are wanting to use European setups with commas as decimals. This is fine inside the application itself but any SQL command strings generated come out in the client PC's local format settings (SET cus_balance = 10,4) and the server doesn't like that.

>>I was afraid you were going to say that. There's exactly no chance that that syntax >>would work as you're hoping

>>You're gonna have to fix your app.

Yes I think I am - I've been looking at the links you sent before about lc_numeric and it isn't going to help. At the time this app was written nobody was concerned about foreign formats and didn't think about what would happen if the decimal separator wasn't a dot. Now there is a need for it to be used by people in Scandinavia. Bummer...

I'll get on with changing it then

Thanks for the help anyway

Rob