DM> While I would agree - if they are always numerics, the ideal would
DM> be to  store them as such, sometimes you don't get to control 
DM> these details.

If the numeric values are created a stored by a big endian system while 
the system reading the values from mass storage is little endian, 
storing the values as numerics (instead of character representation) 
leads to incorrect translation.

þ CMPQwk 1.42 999

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