title: MySQL - Single DATETIME or Separate DATE and TIME Columns?
body: <p>In my application I'm developing a functionality for creating "reminders".</p>
  
  <p>A reminder has a date and a time. In my application, I have a form to create / edit reminders - this has two separate fields to input this information:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;input type="text" name="date"&gt;&lt;/input&gt; &lt;!-- datepicker plugin --&gt;
  
  &lt;input type="text" name="time"&gt;&lt;/input&gt; &lt;!-- timepicker plugin --&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now as a rule I have always used a DATETIME column whenever I have needed to store date/time, however this is the first time I'm having to store a user inputted date/time.</p>
  
  <p>I figured it would be best to have seperate DATE and TIME columns, because it would be easier to insert / retrieve the data to / from my application. For example I won't have to combine the values from the two input fields to create a single value to insert in to the database. And likewise I won't have to split a single value in to two values to populate the form fields in edit mode.</p>
  
  <p>But on the other hand won't it be easier to query the table if I used one column? What do you think?</p>