Managing & Using MySQL, 2nd Edition

Chapter 16. MySQL Data Types

MySQL offers a wide variety of data types to support the storage of different kinds of data. This chapter lists the full range of these data types and describes their functionality, syntax, and data storage requirements. For each data type, the syntax shown uses square brackets ([]) to indicate optional parts of the syntax. The following example shows how BIGINT is explained in this chapter:

BIGINT[(display_size)]

This indicates that you can use BIGINT alone or with a display size value. The italics indicate that you do not enter display_size literally, but instead enter your own value. Thus, possible uses of BIGINT include:

BIGINT
BIGINT(20)

Like the BIGINT type above, many MySQL data types support the specification of a display size. Unless otherwise specified, this value must be an integer between 1 and 255.

Table 16-1 lists the data types and categorizes them as numeric, string, date, or complex. You can find the full description of each data type later in this chapter.

Table 16-1. MySQL data types

Data type	Classification
BIGINT	Numeric
BLOB	String
CHAR	String
CHARACTER	String
CHARACTER VARYING	String
DATE	Date
DATETIME	Date
DEC	Numeric
DECIMAL	Numeric
DOUBLE	Numeric
DOUBLE PRECISION	Numeric
ENUM	Complex
FLOAT	Numeric
INT	Numeric
INTEGER	Numeric
LONGBLOB	String
LONGTEXT	String
MEDIUMBLOB	String
MEDIUMINT	Numeric
MEDIUMTEXT	String
NCHAR	String
NATIONAL CHAR