MySQL Data Types Best Practices

Optimize Data Types for a User Table

Given a user table with columns for user ID, age, status, and biography, choose the most efficient MySQL data types for each column.

Expected output: A CREATE TABLE statement with optimized data types.

Hint: Consider data ranges and typical content size for each column.

Convert VARCHAR to ENUM

Identify a column with limited string values and convert its data type from VARCHAR to ENUM.

Expected output: An ALTER TABLE statement changing the column to ENUM with all valid values.

Hint: List all distinct values in the column before conversion.

Choosing the smallest appropriate data type saves storage space, reduces memory usage, and improves query performance by minimizing I/O and index size.

ENUM should be used when a column has a limited set of predefined string values, as it stores values efficiently as numeric indexes and enforces data integrity.

TEXT and BLOB types consume more storage, are slower to process, and cannot be indexed efficiently, which can degrade query performance.