PostgreSQL – SMALLINT Integer Data Type

PostgreSQL allows a type of integer type namely SMALLINT. It requires 2 bytes of storage size and can store integers in the range of -37, 767 to 32, 767. It comes in handy for storing data like the age of people, the number of pages in a book, etc.

Syntax: variable_name SMALLINT

Now let’s look into some examples of use cases of SMALLINT integer type.
Example 1:
In this example we will create a table that stores the number of pages in a book by using the below commands:

CREATE TABLE books (
    book_id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    title VARCHAR (255) NOT NULL,
    pages SMALLINT NOT NULL CHECK (pages > 0)
);

Now let’s add some data to the table using the below command:

INSERT INTO books(title, pages)
VALUES
    ('Jumanji', 600),
    ('Insurgent', 7530), 
    ('Nottingham', 8657),  
    ('Dracula', 3000);

Now let’s check our inserted data using the below commands:

SELECT * FROM books;

Output:

Example 2:
In this example we will create a table that stores the ages of students by using the below commands:

CREATE TABLE student_age(
    student_id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    first_name VARCHAR (255) NOT NULL,
    last_name VARCHAR (255) NOT NULL,
    age SMALLINT NOT NULL CHECK (age > 0)
);

Now let’s add some data to the table using the below command:

INSERT INTO student_age(first_name, last_name, age)
VALUES
    ('Raju', 'Kumar', 25),
    ('Nikhil', 'Aggarwal', 21), 
    ('Baccha', 'Yadav', 45),  
    ('Geeta', 'Devi', 30);

Now let’s check our inserted data using the below commands:

SELECT * FROM student_age;

Output: