One can enter values apart from 0 and 1 (say 2,3,?100) in a field with tinyint(1) type in MySql. MySql doesn?t complain. Now if you want to read inserted data using PHP it will return value as it is, however this will not work with Java. Java will throw an exception while reading same MySql data. Java treats tinyint(1) as Boolean and returns only true or false. Two solution either we can make our column tinyint(something > 1), or can add the connection property 'tinyInt1isBit=false' to our JDBC URL. Adding connection property 'tinyInt1isBit=false' to JDBC URL is risky since it will affect entire database data while reading the same using Java. Refer : http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?39,10652,10669#msg-10669