Setting Field Properties

Name

The Name is a descriptive identifier for a field that can be up to 64 characters (letters or numbers) including spaces. The names should be descriptive enough that anyone can easily identify them when viewing or editing records. For example, LastName, FirstName, StreetAddress, or HomePhone.

Use the Name edit box to set the field name. Note that the name of the field must be unique among all the field names in the table.

Type

After you name a field, you choose a data type for the data to be contained in the field. When you choose a field's data type, you are deciding:

The Type dropdown list defines the type of the field data. See MySQL Data Types for details.

Length and Decimals

Use the Length edit box to define the length of the field and use Decimals edit box to define the number of digits after the decimal point (the scale) for Floating Point data type.

Note: Be careful when shortening the field length as losing data might be caused.

Allow Null

Allow the NULL values for the field.

Note: To set NULL and Empty String as default value, see Setting Other Field Properties.

Key

A Primary Key is a single field or combination of fields that uniquely defines a record. None of the fields that are part of the primary key can contain a null value.