LU04.S01 - Choose data-types

Which datatype would you use to store the following information? Give reason for your decision.

1. Product-title like trousers up to 50 characters:

• VARCHAR(50)
• Titles can be at the most 50 characters. A fix length like a simple CHAR(50) makes no sense in that case.

2. Product-description up to 255 characters:

• VARCHAR(255)
• The description can be 255 characters, but can also be shorter. A fix length does not make sense in that case.

3. Stock amount:

• INT or INTEGER
• Floating point type is not suitable as pieces are always counted in whole numbers.

4. Price of each piece:

• FLOAT(6,2) or DECIMAL(6,2)
• Prices have floating point
• The length of (6,2) should be sufficient enough as trousers are usually within a price ranger of 0.99 to 9999.99.

5. Order date:

• DATE or DATETIME
• The type depends on whether we want to safe only the date, but also the time.
• Usually in such cases to store only the order-date is enough.

6. Date of delivery:

• DATETIME or TIMESTAMP
• Regarding delivery quality the criteria punctuality might be one key element. Therefore the storage of the delivery-time is compulsory.

7. organic or not:

• BOOLEAN
• As there a only two possibilites to store a boolean data-type is the correct data-type.

8. Usage category with only one character:

• CHAR
• As long as there is only one character to be stored the CHAR-type will work.
• Technically the CHAR-types allows all letters, digits (as letters) and special characters.

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Volkan Demir