Realistically, a decimal type with defined precision is just a coverup for the real problem which is that version numbers aren't decimal numbers. If "1.2" < "1.19" < "1.20" that's not a decimal number and treating or storing it like one is a problem. I've seen this time and time again in software projects where someone treats the version number as a decimal, which works great right up until they have more than 9 minor versions, someone adds a bugfix version or someone adds a beta/alpha suffix. Then a whole bunch of stuff breaks that was making bad assumptions.