On first glance, it looks like TEXT and VARCHAR can store the same information. However, there are fundamental differences between the way TEXT fields and VARCHAR fields work, which are important to take into consideration.

Or, "Missing information in the MySQL Manual". Just earlier today, I was using "POW()", which I've grown quite fond of, simply because it makes life easier. I prefer using it like "SELECT 512*POW(1024,2)" to find out the number of bytes to put in a variable, for example.First, let's take a look at the "POW" function: Name: 'POW'Description:Syntax:POW(X,Y)Returns the value of X raised to the power of Y.Okay, so it gives us a value; but what about the data type? Let's take "512*POW(1024,2)" as an example.5067 (blogs) > SELECT 512*POW(1024,2) AS example;+-----------+| example |+-----------+| 536870912 | +-----------+1 row in set (0.00 sec)What is that? Well, it sure does look like an "INT" at this point, doesn't it?

This article describes the physical difference between the INT and BIGINT datatypes, and shows how selecting the correct datatype can provide a more space efficient disk storage for your MySQL Data.