Bit vs. Boolean columns

Question

Given that bit fields are just binary representations of data and need to be queried in slightly "strange" way.

Does it actually provide any benefit using a bit field for a boolean value? From what I can see it seems to suggest that space is the only real benefit.

Answer 1

Personally, I would use the BOOLEAN for a boolean value. But keep in mind the caveat that in MySQL, BOOLEAN is just a synonym of TINYINT(1) [src].

This, of course, means you can have values other than 0 or 1 if you are not careful. To avoid this, you can use the aliases TRUE and FALSE when inserting and updating data, as those map to 1 and 0 respectively.

For the sake of being complete, prior to 5.0.3, BIT was also a synonym of TINYINT(1).