mysql 储存年月的类型,mysql数据类型仅存储月份和年份

I'm writing a php application that will store STUDENT data in a MySQL relational database. I'm trying to find the best way/datatype to store a month and year together without the day. I don't know whether I should just store it as a DATE and use php someway to just store the day as the 1st or use a different datatype that I'm not currently familiar with. Ideally, I do not want to store a day, because the day will not always be the same and would require changing php source code if the day changed in the future.

Just for more background info, I'm storing a STUDENT's INTENT_TO_GRAD. The client seems to only want this information as a reference or a visual for a report as opposed to using it for data manipulation. In other words, the only functional requirement for this data is to be displayed in a report.

解决方案

Why bother? Just store it as a complete date (perhaps always using the first as the day) and use the database functions MONTH() and YEAR() if you only need part of it. This makes using that field much easier as you can still do range queries, etc.