Sascha Bohnenkamp <bohnenkamp (AT) mevisbreastcare (DOT) de> wrote:
I am afraid that the only documentation for this is the source code.

Also, look at timestamps:

During ./configuration, you can specify --enable-integer-datetimes or
not, and the binary representation of a timestamp will depend on this
setting.
True, you could run 'SHOW integer_datetimes' and make your code depend
on the output, but it seems like a lot of trouble.

I think that the overhead of converting the string representation to
the binary representation is dwarfed by other things, such as query
parsing and network transmission time.

Also, using the string representation you can be certain that your code
will work with every server, no matter what machine it runs on and how
it is configured.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

Laurenz Albe <invite (AT) spam (DOT) to.invalid> wrote:
Just for the heck of it, I looked up the binary representation of
timestamp for --enable-integer-datetimes, and it is an 8 byte integer
in big-endian order.
It contains milliseconds before or after 2000-01-01 00:00:00 AD.
LLONG_MAX or 9223372036854775807LL is +infinity,
LLONG_MAX - 1LL is 294277-01-09 04:00:54.775806 AD
(the maximum possible value),
-LLONG_MAX - 1LL is -infinity,
-211813488000000000LL is 4714-11-24 00:00:00 BC,
and values between -9223372036854775807LL and -211813488000000001LL are
not allowed.

So you see what you're up against :^)

Yours,
Laurenz Albe