What is the ideal data type to use when storing latitude / longitude in a MySQL database?

Question

Bearing in mind that I\'ll be performing calculations on lat / long pairs, what datatype is best suited for use with a MySQL database?

Answer 1

Depends on the precision that you require.

Datatype           Bytes       resolution
------------------ -----  --------------------------------
Deg*100 (SMALLINT)     4  1570 m    1.0 mi  Cities
DECIMAL(4,2)/(5,2)     5  1570 m    1.0 mi  Cities
SMALLINT scaled        4   682 m    0.4 mi  Cities
Deg*10000 (MEDIUMINT)  6    16 m     52 ft  Houses/Businesses
DECIMAL(6,4)/(7,4)     7    16 m     52 ft  Houses/Businesses
MEDIUMINT scaled       6   2.7 m    8.8 ft
FLOAT                  8   1.7 m    5.6 ft
DECIMAL(8,6)/(9,6)     9    16cm    1/2 ft  Friends in a mall
Deg*10000000 (INT)     8    16mm    5/8 in  Marbles
DOUBLE                16   3.5nm     ...    Fleas on a dog

From: http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/latlng

To summarise:

• The most precise available option is DOUBLE.
• The most common seen type used is DECIMAL(8,6)/(9,6).

As of MySQL 5.7, consider using Spatial Data Types (SDT), specifically POINT for storing a single coordinate. Prior to 5.7, SDT does not support indexes (with exception of 5.6 when table type is MyISAM).

Note:

• When using POINT class, the order of the arguments for storing coordinates must be POINT(latitude, longitude).
• There is a special syntax for creating a spatial index.
• The biggest benefit of using SDT is that you have access to Spatial Analyses Functions, e.g. calculating distance between two points (ST_Distance) and determining whether one point is contained within another area (ST_Contains).