Question

I plan to create a table to store the race result like this:

Place    RaceNumber       Gender    　　Name             　Result    
12       0112              Male     Mike　Lee            1:32:40 
16       0117              Female   Rose Mary           2:20:40 

I am confused at the items type definitions.

1. I am not sure the result can be set to varchar(32) or other type?

2. and for racenumber, between int(11) and varchar(11), which one is better?

3. Can I　use　UNIQUE KEY like my way?

4. Do I need to split name to firstname and lastName in my DB table?

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `race_result`;
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `race_result` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `place` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `racenumber` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `gender` enum('male','female') NOT NULL,
  `name` varchar(16) NOT NULL,
  `result` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`),
  UNIQUE KEY `racenumber` (`racenumber`,`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=3 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=3;

Answer 1

Some advice/opinions regarding datatypes.

Result – This is a time, you may want to do some calculations on this time, therefore you should store it as a time type.

RaceNumber – This is a reference, whilst it is a number, you will be performing no calculations on this number. Therefore you should store it as a varchar rather than an int. This will avoid confusion as to its usage and avoid accidently manipulation of it as a number.

Name – Look at the length of string you allow for the Name. Be careful about limiting this value by so much. 16 characters may be too small for some names in the future.

Place – Is this required storage? Can you calculate the place of a runner based on their Result alone? However, you should keep a good primary key for your table.