Integer vs String in database

Question

When defining datatypes in a database, I have always had a problem with choosing whether to use integers or strings to store certain \'numerical\' data.

Say I am bui

Answer 1

Postcodes are strings. For some comtries, those strings may consist onl of numeric digits, but that doesn't make them integers. And sooner or later your potal system will run out of digits and decide to start using letters as well. If your database uses integers for the postcode field, you will be in deep doo-doo.

Bottom line - if you don't do arithmetic on it, it's probably not really a number.