I don't know if this is anything to be proud of, but how I format dates in MySQL is as the nine-digit time integer. So sorting works fine, and I don't have to learn how to do SQL dates and I have something readily manipulable back home in perl. And it hardly takes any space. For a limited period, you can store them in an INT(9) field, though for future-proofing, as the saintly merlyn points out, INT(10) might be worth the extra bytes...

§ George Sherston