Question

I’m working with map data, and the Latitude/Longitude extends to 8 decimal places. For example:

Latitude 40.71727401
Longitude -74.00898606

I saw in the Google document
which uses:

lat FLOAT( 10, 6 ) NOT NULL,  
lng FLOAT( 10, 6 ) NOT NULL

however, their decimal places only go to 6.
Should I use FLOAT(10, 8) or is there another method to consider for storing this data so it’s precise. It will be used with map calculations. Thanks!

Answer 1

MySQL supports Spatial data types and Point is a single-value type which can be used. Example:

CREATE TABLE `buildings` (
  `coordinate` POINT NOT NULL,
  /* Even from v5.7.5 you can define an index for it */
  SPATIAL INDEX `SPATIAL` (`coordinate`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB;

/* then for insertion you can */
INSERT INTO `buildings` 
(`coordinate`) 
VALUES
(POINT(40.71727401 -74.00898606));