Is there any difference between DECIMAL and NUMERIC in SQL Server?
This is what then SQL2003 standard (§6.1 Data Types) says about the two:
<exact numeric type> ::=
NUMERIC [ <left paren> <precision> [ <comma> <scale> ] <right paren> ]
| DECIMAL [ <left paren> <precision> [ <comma> <scale> ] <right paren> ]
| DEC [ <left paren> <precision> [ <comma> <scale> ] <right paren> ]
| SMALLINT
| INTEGER
| INT
| BIGINT
...
21) NUMERIC specifies the data type
exact numeric, with the decimal
precision and scale specified by the
<precision> and <scale>.
22) DECIMAL specifies the data type
exact numeric, with the decimal scale
specified by the <scale> and the
implementation-defined decimal
precision equal to or greater than the
value of the specified <precision>.
They are the same. Numeric is functionally equivalent to decimal.
MSDN: decimal and numeric