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

depending on you application, i suggest using FLOAT(9,6)

spatial keys will give you more features, but in by production benchmarks the floats are much faster than the spatial keys. (0,01 VS 0,001 in AVG)