MariaDB Data Types
A data type represents the type of the data that can be stored and processed. Some common data types include integer, floating point, string, boolean, etc. A data type also specifies the type of operations that can be performed on that type.
MariaDB supports a lot of the standard data types of SQL. These data types are divided into various categories, but most of them fall into three main categories viz. Numeric data type, date and time data type, large object data type and string data type.
Numeric Data Types:
There are mainly eighteen numeric data types that MariaDB supports. These are listed below:
| Data Type | Range | Maximum width | Description |
| BIT | -128 to 127(signed)
0 to 255(unsigned) |
4 digits | Very small integer values. |
| INT | -2147483648 to 2147483647 (signed)
0 to 4294967295 (unsigned) |
11 digits | Normal sized integer value. |
| INTEGER | -2147483648 to 2147483647 (signed)
0 to 4294967295 (unsigned) |
11 digits | Normal sized integer value. |
| TINYINT | -128 to 127(signed)
0 to 255(unsigned) |
4 digits | Very small integer values. |
| SMALLINT | -32768 to 32767 (signed)
0 to 65535 (unsigned) |
5 digits | Small integer value. |
| MEDIUMINT | -8388608 to 8388607 (signed)
0 to 16777215 (unsigned) |
9 digits | Medium sized integer value. |
| BIGINT | -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807 (signed)
0 to 18446744073709551615 (unsigned) |
20 digits | Large integer value. |
| FLOAT | – | – | Single precision floating point number. |
| DOUBLE | – | – | Double precision floating point number. |
| DOUBLE
PRECISION |
– | – | Double precision floating point number. |
| DECIMAL | – | – | Unpacked fixed point number. |
| DEC | – | – | Unpacked fixed point number. |
| NUMERIC | – | – | Unpacked fixed point number. |
| FIXED | – | – | Unpacked fixed point number. |
| REAL | – | – | Double precision floating point number. |
| FLOAT | – | – | Floating point number. |
| BOOL | – | – | Equivalent to TINYINT(1) |
| BOOLEAN | – | – | Equivalent to TINYINT(1) |
Date and Time Data Types:
There are mainly five date and time data types that MariaDB supports. These are listed below:
| Data Type | Range | Format |
| DATE | ‘1000-01-01’ to ‘9999-12-31’ | yyyy-mm-dd |
| DATETIME | ‘1000-01-01 00:00:00’ to ‘9999-12-31 23:59:59’ | yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss |
| TIMESTAMP(m) | ‘1970-01-01 00:00:01’ UTC to ‘2038-01-19 03:14:07’ UTC | YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS |
| TIME | ‘-838:59:59’ to ‘838:59:59’ | HH:MM:SS |
| YEAR[(2|4)] | 2 digits or 4 digits value | 4 digits by default |
String Data Types:
There are mainly eight string data types that MariaDB supports. These are listed below:
| Data Type | Maximum Size | Description |
| CHAR(size) | 255 characters | Here, size is equal to the number of characters to store. It is used for fixed-length strings with space padded on right to equal size characters. |
| VARCHAR(size) | 255 characters | Here, size is equal to the number of characters to store. It is used for variable-length strings. |
| TINYTEXT(size) | 255 characters | Here, size is equal to the number of characters to store. |
| TEXT(size) | 65,535 characters | Here, size is equal to the number of characters to store. |
| MEDIUMTEXT(size) | 16,777,215 characters | Here, size is equal to the number of characters to store. |
| LONGTEXT(size) | 4GB or 4,294,967,295 characters | Here, size is equal to the number of characters to store. |
| BINARY(size) | 255 characters | Here, size is equal to the number of binary characters to store. It is used for fixed-length strings with space padded on right to equal size characters. |
| VARBINARY(size) | 255 characters | Here, size is equal to the number of binary characters to store. It is used for variable-length strings. |
Large Object (LOB) Data Types:
There are mainly four large object or LOB data types that MariaDB supports. These are listed below:
| Data Type | Maximum Size |
| TINYBLOB | 255 bytes |
| BLOB(size) | 65,535 bytes |
| MEDIUMBLOB | 16,777,215 bytes |
| LONGTEXT | 4GB or 4,294,967,295 characters |