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Using INT or VARCHAR to store numbers, or convert to HEX?


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I need to  save as much space in my database as possible, and I will be storing Facebook IDs in a table, which are very long, and I was wondering whether I would save more space converting the numbers to HEX and storing them in a VARCHAR, or just saving them in an INT field.

 

Thanks.

I dont think that it is really necessary to save them as hex. If you were to convert them to hex it would take extra time to run, then when you needed to query it back you would have to decrypt it (taking extra time) and its not really going to take up that much space in the database. You could however always store them as a varchar if you choose though.

I would store it as an integer just because that is what it is and it generally is a good idea to store data as the type that they are. But there are always exceptions to the rules.

 

A good read that may help you decide:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/storage-requirements.html

 

Check out that.

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