I was wondering what is the difference between allocating lenght of 4 for an integer (column) and length of 8? I am just trying to understand the reasoning behind it. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

unfortunately, this is one of those things that you find in mysql that is really confusing to many people

there is no "length" to integer datatypes

INTEGER(4) is the same as INTEGER(11) is the same as INTEGER(937) as far as the range of numbers that it can hold is concerned

the number in parentheses applies only to the number of digits shown by default when the ZEROFILL option is chosen

look it up in the docs for more information

Thanks for the clarification. it really helps.

BTW is zero fill is used for banking application (or similar) to fill in zeros to maintain length of fields?