--- In baseball-databank@yahoogroups.com, Paul DuBois <paul@...> wrote:
>
>
> On Oct 18, 2008, at 10:56 PM, wyerscj wrote:
>
> > --- 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?
>
> If the nature of the data is that it is unsigned, it should be stored
> in an unsigned column. If the nature of your application is that you
> use the values in a signed way, *your application* should make the
> necessary adjustments.
>
> Otherwise, why should the next person not come along and say, my
> purposes require the values to be floats, can the schema be changed to
> make them floats?
>


Anything in baseball that could possibly be a negative number?