SQL DataType - How to store a year?

Question

I need to insert a year(eg:1988 ,1990 etc) in a database. When I used Date or Datetime data type, it is showing errors. Which datatype should I use.

Answer 1

Just a year, nothing else ? Why not use a simple integer ?

Answer 2

Use integer if all you need to store is the year. You can also use datetime if you think there will be date based calculations while querying this column

Answer 3

If you need to store a year in the database, you would either want to use an Integer datatype (if you are dead set on only storing the year) or a DateTime datatype (which would involve storing a date that basically is 1/1/1990 00:00:00 in format).

Answer 4

regular 4 byte INT is way to big, is a waste of space!

You don't say what database you're using, so I can't recommend a specific datatype. Everyone is saying "use integer", but most databases store integers at 4 bytes, which is way more than you need. You should use a two byte integer (smallint on SQL Server), which will conserve space better.

Answer 5

Hey,you can Use year() datatype in MySQL It is available in two-digit or four-digit format.

Note: Values allowed in four-digit format: 1901 to 2155. Values allowed in two-digit format: 70 to 69, representing years from 1970 to 2069