SQL data types

[Puiu]

I want to store a 13 digits number in a table in a database and i was curios what would be the best data type to do this?

Varchar or Bigint ?

 

I don't need to calculate anything with these numbers, just to store them using the lowest disk space

[Cags]

I don't know whether it applies to general programming, but when I was working with access databases back at 6th form (5 years ago now) we were told that if a number will never be used for calculation you should store it as a string.

[Joe Mamma]

I want to store a 13 digits number in a table in a database and i was curios what would be the best data type to do this?

Varchar or Bigint ?

 

I don't need to calculate anything with these numbers, just to store them using the lowest disk space

diskspace is cheap compared to a hard to find bug.

store them in char(13) - left pad with zeros.

 

nothing worse that people storing SSN's in int fields.

[Nerseus]

For me, if I know it's a number that I'm storing, I'd rather use a bigint than varchar. I'm thinking ahead to when this is read out - if it's varchar, there's a chance someone will put the letter "a" out there. I hate writing conversion programs for older systems where everything was a varchar, even dates, and you get those weird anomalies that won't convert right.

 

If this is a number that "looks like" a number but isn't (like an SSN), I'd definitely store as varchar.

 

-ner