To facilitate the use of code written for SQL implementations from other vendors, MySQL maps data
types as shown in the following table. These mappings make it easier to import table definitions from
other database systems into MySQL.
Other Vendor Type MySQL Type
BOOL TINYINT
BOOLEAN TINYINT
CHARACTER VARYING(M) VARCHAR(M)
FIXED DECIMAL
FLOAT4 FLOAT
FLOAT8 DOUBLE
INT1 TINYINT
INT2 SMALLINT
INT3 MEDIUMINT
INT4 INT
INT8 BIGINT
LONG VARBINARY MEDIUMBLOB
LONG VARCHAR MEDIUMTEXT
LONG MEDIUMTEXT
MIDDLEINT MEDIUMINT
NUMERIC DECIMAL
Data type mapping occurs at table creation time, after which the original type specifications are
discarded. If you create a table with types used by other vendors and then issue a DESCRIBE
tbl_name statement, MySQL reports the table structure using the equivalent MySQL types. For
example:
mysql> CREATE TABLE t (a BOOL, b FLOAT8, c LONG VARCHAR, d NUMERIC);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> DESCRIBE t;
+-------+---------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------+---------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| a | tinyint(1) | YES | | NULL | |
| b | double | YES | | NULL | |
| c | mediumtext | YES | | NULL | |
| d | decimal(10,0) | YES | | NULL | |
+-------+---------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
4 rows in set (0.01 sec)