Define calculated column of BOOLEAN/TINYINT(1) type in a View?

Question

I'm configuring a View which contains calculated columns that should be returning Boolean results. Here's an anonymised version of the view:

CREATE VIEW `ItemView` AS
SELECT Item.ID
    ,ItemProperty1
    ,ItemProperty2
    ,ItemProperty3
    ,EXISTS(SELECT ItemComponent.ItemID FROM ItemComponent WHERE ItemComponent.ItemID = Item.ID) AS Operation1Required
    ,Item.Property4 <> ItemType.Property AS Operation2Required
FROM Item
INNER JOIN ItemType
    ON Item.TypeID = ItemType.ID
ORDER BY ItemProperty2 ASC

At the moment, MariaDB metadata says that the type for the "Operation1Required" and "Operation2Required" columns is INT, even though they are both expressions with fundamentally Boolean results.

I want them to be BOOLEAN/TINYINT(1), because the view is being read by a strongly-typed client which is expecting Boolean values for these columns.

But the CAST() and CONVERT() functions in MySQL/MariaDB 10.1 don't seem to be able to convert to TINYINT(1).

Is there another way I can specify the correct data type for these calculated columns in the View?

I looked at How to cast an integer to a boolean in a MySQL SELECT clause? and tried it out, but the results of IF(expression, TRUE, FALSE) still seem to be INT according to phpMyAdmin's report of the view's structure.

Answer 1

This is currently impossible.

• MySQL doesn't have a real BOOLEAN type, (or a real array type.. or a real JSON type). It has an alias for TINYINT.
• Any condition returns an integer. This is the fastest datatype for a CPU, and presumably this implementation detail is reflected here. For instance, 'true' IS TRUE and 1=1 both return 1 as an int.
• CAST does not provide a TINYINT format.

I would highly suggest migrating to PostgreSQL. It's so much less terrifying... and liberating.