Setting Other Field Properties

To set the default value for the field use the Default edit box.

Note: TEXT(tinytext, text, mediumtext and longtext) and BLOB(tinyblob, blob, mediumblob and longblob) data type cannot have DEFAULT values.

To set any optional text describing the current field use the Comment edit box.

Note: Apply to all data type.

To set other field properties for Text/Memo and BLOB (Binary Large Object) (not apply to binary/varbinary type)

Character set (non-binary strings only)
A character set is a set of symbols and encodings. The Character set drop-down list defines the type of the character set for field.

Collation (non-binary strings only)
A collation is a set of rules for comparing characters in a character set. The Collation drop-down list defines the type of the collation for field.

Note: MySQL chooses the column character set and collation in the following manner:
    • If both CHARACTER SET X and COLLATE Y were specified, then character set X and collation Y are used.
    • If CHARACTER SET X was specified without COLLATE, then character set X and its default collation are used.
    • Otherwise, the table character set and collation are used.

Key Length
The edit box will be enabled when Primary Key is set. KEY LENGTH (1 - 255).

Binary (char and varchar only)
As of MySQL 4.1, values in CHAR and VARCHAR fields are sorted and compared according to the collation of the character set assigned to the field.

Before MySQL 4.1, sorting and comparison are based on the collation of the server character set; you can declare the field with the BINARY attribute to cause sorting and comparison to be based on the numeric values of the bytes in field values. BINARY does not affect how field values are stored or retrieved.

To set other field properties for Number/Currency and Floating Point (not apply to bit type)

Auto Increment (Number/Currency only)
The AUTO INCREMENT attribute can be used to generate a unique identity for new rows. To start with the AUTO INCREMENT value other than 1, you can set that value in Options.

Unsigned
UNSIGNED values can be used when you want to allow only non-negative numbers in a field and you need a bigger upper numeric range for the field.

As of MySQL 4.0.2, floating-point and fixed-point types also can be UNSIGNED. Unlike the integer types, the upper range of column values remains the same.

Zerofill
The default padding of spaces is replaced with zeros. For example, for a field declared as INT(5) ZEROFILL, a value of 4 is retrieved as 00004; for a field declared as FLOAT(20,10) ZEROFILL, a value of 0.1 is retrieved as 000000000.1000000015.

Note: If you specify ZEROFILL for a numeric type, MySQL automatically adds the UNSIGNED attribute to the field.

To set other field properties for Date/Time

On Update Current_Timestamp (timestamp only)
As of 4.1.2, you have more flexibility in deciding which TIMESTAMP field automatically is initialized and updated to the current timestamp.

To set other field properties for Set/Enumerate

Values
Use Values edit box to define the members of SET/ENUM. A SET field can have a maximum of 64 members. An ENUM field can have a maximum of 65,535 distinct values.