Tim Soderstrom wrote:
On Dec 29, 2008, at 9:11 AM, Jay Pipes wrote:
From the MySQL Manual:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/time.html
"MySQL retrieves and displays TIME values in 'HH:MM:SS' format (or
'HHH:MM:SS' format for large hours values). TIME values may range from
'-838:59:59' to '838:59:59'. The hours part may be so large because
the TIME type can be used not only to represent a time of day (which
must be less than 24 hours), but also elapsed time or a time interval
between two events (which may be much greater than 24 hours, or even
negative)."
Question:
Does anyone use the TIME column type?
Yes. I use it to store song lengths. I assume the same holds true for
people wanting to store videos, etc.
OK. So, basically, you are just using TIME as a presentation thing,
right? TIME outputs automatically as HH:MM:SS, and that is good for
your application?
If so, do you use the "large hours" ability to store hours > 23:59:59?
I haven't, but this came up once. Someone wanted to track the total
length of time someone was logged in. And, in fact, it was thought that
he might need MORE than 839 hours :) I wouldn't really say there's a
huge need for this, however. Though, I would like to keep the TIME
field. For storing reasonable lengths (again songs), it's wildly
convenient.
What about storing the elapsed time in seconds in an integer column?
I'm looking to simplify the temporal column types and this is one type
I believe may possibly be up for the chopping block, but certainly
want to get people's opinion on it.
Well, since Drizzle is going to be pluggable, is this something that can
be a plugin and simply be built from native storage types? Like
human-readable IPv4 addresses, the underlying storage could just be an
integer. When you store or call it, you could just automatically run a
function to present it in a friendly way? That may be already what you
are doing with the TIME field and I can't claim to be an expert but
thought I'd throw that out there :)
Possibly. Right now, I'm just trying to simplify both the internal
implementation of TIME and the external "weirdness" of the 838 hours
thing...
-jay
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