column type

[Jeff Godfrey]

I am putting together a SQL table which will hold a latitude and
longitude for each record. An example of a latitude is: 47 05 36.5
Which column type would best represent this and retain the spaces
between degrees, minutes, seconds? Text, varchar, char?

Thanks
Jeff

jeff-godfrey@wa.nacd net.org

[Gert-Jan Strik]

Re: column type

Don't use Text. Text is only useful for large texts and needs special
treatment.

Since the variability in value length will be small I would opt for the
char datatype. Other than that varchar is a fine choice as well. If you
choose char, make sure you don't overdimension it (you would waste
space).

Gert-Jan


Jeff Godfrey wrote:[color=blue]
>
> I am putting together a SQL table which will hold a latitude and
> longitude for each record. An example of a latitude is: 47 05 36.5
> Which column type would best represent this and retain the spaces
> between degrees, minutes, seconds? Text, varchar, char?
>
> Thanks
> Jeff
>
> jeff-godfrey@wa.nacd net.org[/color]

[Anith Sen]

Re: column type

Unless you are doing any computations on the values in this column, you can
use CHAR datatype. If each portion of this data has operational significance
or need any computations, you may be better off storing them as separate
numeric columns.

--
- Anith
( Please reply to newsgroups only )

[--CELKO--]

Re: column type

>> a latitude and longitude ... Which column type would best
represent this and retain the spaces between degrees, minutes,
seconds? Text, varchar, char? <<

If you have to compute with them, you might want to use FLOAT and
convert things to radians, and display them with a UDF.