yes/no datatype?

[Anon]

Hi - I have a field that will only contain a '1' or a '0'. Is the tinyint(1) the best datatype for this?

Tony.

[[deleted]]

It's just fine. But leave out the '(1)', just use tinyint.

[Anon]

Hi Vincent
why leave out the '1'?

[Anon]

i'd use an enum('yes', 'no') really...

or a set('yes') but that's harder to use in queries...

[[deleted]]

You could do that, if you don't mind using 'yes' and 'no' in all your queries, and all the functions that work with the data later.
You get a string back from the queries, so you'll have to do a string comparison to find out if it was 'yes' or 'no', which is probably slower than a numeric comparison. Marginally, but splitting hairs is my hobby.

[[deleted]]

Because it's for display purposes only, and is of no influence on the data itself.
In fact, you can get into a fair amount of trouble with it, for example when you say 'timestamp12'. that gives some amazing results when your export/import data dumps..:-)