Hi

I need to store time in my DB. I wonder which is the best or recommended way to do it.

Should I use timestamps ? Should I use a String representation in a varchar ?

I will need to make searches with comparisons with this field so speed for that is important.

Thanks in advance

C

I don't know which database you are using, but I would recommend using timestamp. You can very easily do comparisons on dates and most databases are optimized to manage them.

Using varchar representations can also lead into other issues such as formatting (dd/MM/yyyy or MM/dd/yyyy for example).

Thanks for your reply.

I'm talking about time and not date. I just one to store an init time and a finish time for some process and I don't mind about date.

To be clear, If I do it with varchars I'll store 20:35 and not 12/20/2006 20:35.

any idea ?

Thanks in advance

C

I'd still use datetime (timestamp) fields. Of course, some databases offer only time fields and some don't. Depending on the DB, the choice can be different. If you could specify the db I could give you a better answer

MySQL.

In MySQL there is a TIME data type. MySQL offers various functions to do date and time comparisons

Here are some more details for MySQL 5

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/3577131