identify special columns with same meaning easily and modify data type

Use case: We want find columns with same meaning distributed over several tables easily either to modify the data type or find out the affected columns/tables only.

For example there are price/money and other columns, each with an arbitrary column name, defined with decimal(8,2).

How can we find only the price columns? Of course this can be achieved by corresponding column names.

Nevertheless we want give a special built-in type an alias or synonym name (decimal(8,2) = price, decimal(10,2) = pricesum, decimal(8,2) = weight) that acts like a built-in type without any casts. The most amazing thing would be, if the synonyms built-in type can be modified for all used columns at once.

Problem:

With distinct type you can define an alias/synonym for a built-in type but there are two drawbacks:

A create distinct type creates automatically explicit casts and the distinct types has to be casted every time (Manipulating Distinct Types). Of course it’s possible to drop the explicit casts and create implicit casts but why are implicit casts not created by default?
Using distinct types to identify special columns leads to an expensive update scenario:

alter table modify to built-in type
drop type
create new type
alter table modify to new type

A alter (distinct) type would be very helpful.

Needed by Date

Jan 1, 2020

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identify special columns with same meaning easily and modify data type