I need to implement a data type which should preserve the last zeros in the decimal points in SQL Server 2008 R2. Example of the data are
1.002
1.210
0.00100
0.1401
My clients get lab measurements like these and the number of decimal points tell what typee of instrumentation, methods etc. the lab used. They require to store the data as it is (not 1.21 for 1.210). For now I have a custom data type which implements varchar type as a base type, but the developers do not like it as the conversion to use mathematical operators involve some overhead. Is there any numeric type solution to handle this type of issue?
numeric(x,5)
then have another column that indicates the original scale?