title: numeric(38,0) as primary key column; good, bad, who cares?
body: <p>On my current project, I came across our master DB script. Taking a closer look at it, I noticed that all of our original primary keys have a data type of <strong>numeric(38,0)</strong>
  We are currently running SQL Server 2005 as our primary DB platform.</p>
  
  <p>For a little context, we support both Oracle and SQL Server as our back-end. In Oracle, our primary keys have a data type of <strong>number(38,0).</strong></p>
  
  <p>Does anybody know of possible side-effects and performance impact of such implementation? I have always advocated and implemented <em>int</em> or <em>bigint</em> as primary keys and would love to know if numeric(38,0) is a better alternative.</p>