--- In baseball-databank@yahoogroups.com, "Randy Fiato"
<sysadmin@...> wrote:
>
> I realize that this is a relatively minor detail in relation to
some of the
> other things being planned here, but I've noticed that the current
MySQL
> schema has several fields that are oversized. That is to say, the
fields are
> represented as an integer that is far too large for the possible
range of
> values.
>
> For example, in the Master table, birthYear and deathYear are both
int(4),
> which in MySQL is a 4-byte integer. smallint(4) unsigned (the same
as yearID
> in the other tables) would be better, as this uses only 2 bytes.
Similarly,
> the bith/death days and months could be tinyint(2) unsigned instead
of
> int(2).
>
> Another example that occurs in several tables is that games in a
season (or
> wins, losses, etc.) can be described as tinyint(3) unsigned (range
of 0 -
> 255) instead of smallint(3). I don't think MLB is going to start
playing
> 250-game seasons any time soon. :-)
>
> I've made these changes, among several others, to my copy and have
been able
> to shrink the size of the database by at least a couple of
megabytes (not
> sure of the exact amount).
>
> --
> Randy Fiato
> System Administrator, Big League Forums
<http://www.bigleagueforums.net/>

And to think this is the source of most of my problems. (Well, no,
but I'm trying to add dramatic flair.)

The problem I'm running into is that, to use these values for a lot
of purposes I have to recast them as signed variables. I really
couldn't find any other discussion on these issues - would it be
really inconvenient to change the schema to not use unsigned
variables?

--CW