Hi,
since mySQL 4.1.0 TIMESTAMP is returned as a string of type 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'. Before that it was an integer of type 'YYYYMMDDHHMMSS'.
I strongly suggest a variable for switching between the old and the new behaviour to keep all the code out there compatible. This should be very easy to implement in mySQL but would help many people a lot.
Without it, you would have to publish different versions of code for use with mySQL < 4.1.0 and mySQL >= 4.1.0, for example when using substrings for extracting year, month, ... from the TIMESTAMP.
And it is quite an effort to find all the places where a timestamp from a SELECT might be used, for example for a WHERE in another query. Before 4.1.0 this could be done without '' as it was an integer, but now you have to put '' around it.
There are many discussions around this in a lot of forums. So, please give this compatibility switch to all of us (including me).
Thomas
P.S.: This is the change that I refer to:
Warning: Incompatible change! TIMESTAMP is now returned as a string of type 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS' and different timestamp lengths are not supported. This change was necessary for SQL standards compliance. In a future version, a further change will be made (backward compatible with this change), allowing the timestamp length to indicate the desired number of digits of fractions of a second.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/News-4.1.0.html