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

Based on this wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_degrees#Accuracy the appropriate data type in MySQL is Decimal(9,6) for storing the longitude and latitude in separate fields.