About this question
So this will be the dummy question of the year but I need to ask since it is not the first time I passed through this. Take a look to the following table definition:
Take a look at the column from_number which is a VARCHAR(45) right now but it will hold a phone number. Since I don't know how many numbers a phone could have all over the world then I am trying to cover almost all of them. I want to keep database integrity as much as possible so I think VARCHAR is not a proper type for holding this kind of information - maybe I am wrong, you tell me - so I am thinking of changing to INT or even BIGINT.
When I am defining a column in Workbench I should specify the number between parentheses () not in all the cases but in those I mentioned previously I had to. So if I do this: BIGINT() I got this error:
Which guides me to read a bit about this MySQL type here. Basically the info is this: A large integer. ... The unsigned range is 0 to 18446744073709551615.
Which makes me ask: what value should I set for parentheses when I am defining a BIGINT() type. (I am using BIGINT because I don't know if INT can hold as many numbers as a phone could have - perhaps I am wrong too). Which is the right way to create|design a column in MariaDB/MySQL databases?
Anyway I would like to know your opinion, experience and of course I would like to get an answer
Note: I am using MySQL Workbench latest edition to create the ER diagram. I am using also MariaDB 10.0.x
