When should I use UNSIGNED and SIGNED INT in MySQL?
UNSIGNED
only stores positive numbers (or zero). On the other hand, signed can store negative numbers (i.e., may have a negative sign).
Here's a table of the ranges of values each INTEGER
type can store:
Source: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/integer-types.html
UNSIGNED
ranges from 0
to n
, while signed ranges from about -n/2
to n/2
.
In this case, you have an AUTO_INCREMENT
ID column, so you would not have negatives. Thus, use UNSIGNED
. If you do not use UNSIGNED
for the AUTO_INCREMENT
column, your maximum possible value will be half as high (and the negative half of the value range would go unused).
Use UNSIGNED
for non-negative integers.