Inconsistent PHP Type for "bigint" columns

It seems like columns of type "bigint" have no consistent PHP type.

If an object is read from the database, the database value seems to be cast to
a PHP string. However, directly after persisting an entity using an id generation strategy of "AUTO" the type is a PHP integer.

I think it would make sense to use a PHP string for both cases as you otherwise can run into problems if you use shallow comparisons such as "===".