Whenever an amount is stored, it is important to be aware of the unit and scale this value is used with. E.g. German brokers give the values of their stocks in Euro with two decimal places. British brokers give values in Pence with no decimals.
Even if two numbers share the same semantics, they do not always add up. Since everybody has his own background we tend to naturally assume numbers to have specific values and scales.
When a bridge over the river Rhine was built, starting simultaneously from the German and Swiss side, both sides of the bridge met with a different height. It was previously agreed to measure all heights as meters above sea level. But the interpretation of sea level differs by 25 cm as Germany uses the mean sea level at Amsterdam while Switzerland uses the sea level at Marseille.
These conflicts are easy to spot but equally easy to miss, as practice shows.
This is an auto-generated Asset Development Assistant. Please refer to the library item Asset Development Assistant for further information.