Using microseconds in the DATETIME columns

There was a time when measuring dates and times accurately to within a single second were as precise as we needed it to be. However, those days are gone. Users expect their apps to have response times of well under a second, and so our databases must be able to track those times as well.

How to do it...

1. Launch the mysql command-line client application and connect it to our MariaDB server.

2. Create a test database if it doesn't already exist and switch to it using the following command:

   CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS test;
   USE test;
   

3. Create a simple two-column table named times using the following command:

   CREATE TABLE times (
     id int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
     dt datetime(6),
     PRIMARY KEY (id)
   );
   

4. Run the following INSERT statements at least four times and add some sample data to our table using the following command:

   INSERT INTO times (dt) VALUES (NOW()), (NOW(6));
   

5. Select all of the data from our table with the following SELECT command:

   SELECT * FROM...