Using Data Types from Other Database Engines To facilitate the use of code written for SQL implementations from other vendors, MySQL maps data types as shown in the following table. These mappings make it easier to import table definitions from other database systems into MySQL. Other Vendor Type MySQL Type BOOL TINYINT BOOLEAN TINYINT CHARACTER VARYING( M ) VARCHAR( M ) FIXED DECIMAL FLOAT4 FLOAT FLOAT8 DOUBLE INT1 TINYINT INT2 SMALLINT INT3 MEDIUMINT INT4 INT INT8 BIGINT LONG VARBINARY MEDIUMBLOB LONG VARCHAR MEDIUMTEXT LONG MEDIUMTEXT MIDDLEINT MEDIUMINT NUMERIC DECIMAL Data type mapping occurs at table creation time, after which the original type specifications are discarded. If you create a table with types used by other vendors and then issue a  DESCRIBE  tbl_name  statement, MySQL reports the table structure using the equivalent MySQL types. For example: mysql>  CREATE TABLE t (a BOOL, b FLOAT8, c LONG VARCHAR, d NUMERIC); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) mysql>  DESCRIBE t; +-------+---------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +-------+---------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | a | tinyint(1) | YES | | NULL | | | b | double | YES | | NULL | | | c | mediumtext | YES | | NULL | | | d | decimal(10,0) | YES | | NULL | | +-------+---------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ 4 rows in set (0.01 sec) 2092