Handling of Floating Point Items

You can configure floating point items to use either the IBM Hexadecimal format or the IEEE 754 format. The format is selected in the Copybook connection.

IEEE-754 and IBM Hexadecimal are two different floating point formats. IBM hexadecimal is the format most commonly used on IBM mainframe computers. IEEE-754 is used by many other hardware platforms and software systems.

There are inherent differences in the degree of precision and the magnitude of the exponent offered by these two formats. The differences are as follows:

• IBM float and double formats use a 7 bit exponent value that represents an exponent of base 16.
• IEEE formats use 8 bits for float and 11 bits for double that represents an exponent of base 2.
• The remaining bits in both formats are used for precision so there are commensurate differences in the degree of precision available.

The Connector is capable of processing IBM hexadecimal format. This functionality is enabled using the Floating Point field in the Copybook resource.