title: MySQL - best data type for simple time with hours and minutes
body: <p>I need to represent the due time for tasks in my MySQL 5 database.<br>
  Then, I need to store times like these:<br>
  _ 18<br>
  _ 9:15<br>
  _ 12:00  </p>
  
  <p>Now I am in dilemma whether to use the time datatype or just a 4-digit integer as I just need to store hours and minutes.<br>
  In the second case, I would store:<br>
  _ 1800<br>
  _ 0915<br>
  _ 1200  </p>
  
  <p>What are the implication of both the approaches?<br>
  Which solution would you implement given that the most important requirement is high performance in a huge dataset (millions of rows)?</p>
  
  <p>The application code is written in PHP.</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong> I was thinking of an important point. If I use integers, I need to do some string manipulation with PHP when I display the time (to insert the semicolon) that probably nullify the gain with using integers</p>
  
  <p>Thanks,<br>
  Dan</p>