On Jan 27, 2009, at 11:31 PM, mos wrote:
> Are date columns stored as String or Integer in a MyISAM table?
>
> I am trying to squeeze more speed from my application and a date
> column is used in most of the indexes for my tables. I'm wondering
> if changing the Date data type to an Integer is going to speed the
> queries up. I'm using Delphi and internally it represents dates as
> float so using integers will speed up the Delphi code. But the main
> slow down I have is with executing the queries. The dates are used
> in the indexes, sorting, and in a few table joins. So is there a
> speed advantage of switching the dates to integer?
Dates are stored numerically. See:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/storage-requirements.html
Beginning with "The storage requirements shown in the table arise from
the way that MySQL represents temporal values ..."
--
Paul DuBois
Sun Microsystems / MySQL Documentation Team
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
www.mysql.com
