From: Martijn Tonies
Date: January 29 2009 9:09pm
Subject: Re: Are dates stored as String? Or Integer?
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> 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?

Don't do it! Save yourself the hassle and let MySQL store
the dates for you in whatever format it likes. You can use
indices to speed up your lookups.

When doing a comparison against a value, MySQL probably
encodes the written value to it's own internal format, so you
lost your "speed" there anyway...

With regards,

Martijn Tonies
Upscene Productions

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