Oop. I guess I missed the point of that question. Still, the MySQL manual says a DATE takes 3 bytes, DATETIME 8 bytes, and TIMESTAMP 4 bytes. That seems fairly efficient. Using an INT for a date might actually take up more space.
-Steve On Thursday, October 25, 2001, at 09:34 AM, Steve Cayford wrote: > Yep, MySQL has DATE, DATETIME, and TIMESTAMP field types. You can order > by them and everything. > > -Steve > > On Thursday, October 25, 2001, at 09:18 AM, Tim Foster wrote: > >> I'm new to this list, to PHP and to MySQL (been doing VBScript on ASP >> for several years, >> tho). >> >> I'm curious... >> >> If you're going to store it as an integer, why not store "10/24/2001" >> as YYYYMMDD >> (20011024). This gives you the added benefit of being able to have the >> db sort your >> fields. This even works if you want to include the time with your date >> (provided all dates >> in the field consistently contain the same *amount* of info). For >> example, noon on >> Christmas will always be lower than noon of the following New Year >> ..as it should be: >> >> YYYY/MM/DD 20011225 < 20020101 >> YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM 200112251200 < 200201011200 >> YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS 20011225120000 < 20020101120000 >> >> I'm betting there's no easy way to sort it if you store it as MM/DD/YY >> >> MM/DD/YYYY 10242001 < 12252001 (good) >> ..but NOT less than the following New Year's >> MM/DD/YYYY 10242001 > 01012002 (bad) >> >> Granted, you might take up a bit more space in the DB, which would >> have a tiny impact on >> performance(??), but an extra $100 on the hard drive would effectively >> eliminate any >> reasonable space considerations and (IMHO) reduce the amount of >> programming/debugging to >> more than justify the overhead. >> >> FWIW, M$ likes to store their dates as two integers: one to hold the >> date portion, the >> other to hold the hours:minutes:seconds portion. >> >> If there's something about PHP/MySQL that makes this point moot, >> please let me know. >> >> TIM >> -He who always plows a straight furrow is in a rut. >> >> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: Mike Frazer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] >>> Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 7:54 AM >>> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> Subject: Re: [PHP-DB] PHP and MySQL queries... >>> >>> >>> Agreed. This is especially useful when you need to conserve every >>> byte you >>> can; a timestamp of "10/24/2001" or something similar is going to >>> take 10 >>> bytes as a string and an indeterminate number of bytes for an actual >>> timestamp because of system variations, whereas an integer value of >>> 10242001 >>> will take you 2-4 bytes depending on the type of int you declare. >>> Not a lot >>> of space, but assume for a second you have 30 fields in your database >>> and 5 >>> million rows...suddenly those 6-8 bytes have multiplied on this one >>> field >>> alone. Space and speed are important in DBs :) >>> >>> Mike Frazer >> >> >> -- >> PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list- >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> > > > -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
