<length> should be changed to <scale> for Numeric and DECIMAL types

[Former user]

SQLAlchemy uses <precision> and <length> for Numeric and DECIMAL types whereas it should use <precision> and <scale>, both, in the code and in the documentation.

[Former user]

I can put together a patch for this change, if desired.

[Mike Bayer]

feel free, although we need to maintain backwards compatibility throughout 0.4xx. I've no idea where the "length" term came from, I've searched through the type documentation for several databases to see if one of them used that term but I didn't find anything.

[jek]

Also needs a compatibility descriptor on 'length' for the duration of 0.5.

The weird MySQL formatting thing (INTEGER(4)) could change to display_width at the same time.

[Mike Bayer]

6f60e768837f6b91a75dc2d62dbd215471bf09f7. Just noticed that display_width is here which I implemented in that changeset without realizing it's part of the request.

I would like to remove the *args, **kwargs from AbstractType.__init__() as well, but postgres reflection is currently abusing it, perhaps other dialects too.

[Mike Bayer]

Removing milestone: 0.5.0 (automated comment)