What’s the Ideal Data Type to Use When Storing Latitude / Longitude in a MySQL Database?

Storing latitude and longitude data in relational databases poses some challenges due to the spatial nature of the data, as traditional numeric data types don’t lend themselves well to their related calculations. In this article, we’ll explore some options for storing geographical coordinates (latitude/longitude) in MySQL including DECIMAL and POINT. We’ll also say why you shouldn’t use FLOAT. >>>