SQL Server: Calculation with numeric literals

Question

I did some testing with floating point calculations to minimize the precision loss. I stumbled across a phenomen I want to show here and hopefully get an explanation.

Wh

Answer 1

SQL Server uses the smallest possible datatype.

When you run this script

SELECT SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(1.0, 'BaseType')
SELECT SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(1.0, 'Precision')
SELECT SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(1.0, 'Scale')
SELECT SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(1.0, 'TotalBytes')

you'll see that SQL Server implicitly used a NUMERIC(2, 1) datatype.
The division by 60.0 converts the result to NUMERIC(8, 6).
The final calculation converts the result to NUMERIC(17, 10).

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Edit

Taken from SQL Server Books Online Data Type Conversion

In Transact-SQL statements, a constant with a decimal point is automatically converted into a numeric data value, using the minimum precision and scale necessary. For example, the constant 12.345 is converted into a numeric value with a precision of 5 and a scale of 3.