However at this moment we have no idea of what DATA1,2,3,4 really are

So, just store them as varchars until you figure it out. While numeric types enforce the datum to be numeric and date types enforce that it be a date, varchar has no real constraints other than length and that it be passed as a string (assuming it doesn't implicitly convert it for you).

In reply to Re^8: Sequential data read in MySQL/Perl by chacham
in thread Sequential data read in MySQL/Perl by justin423

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