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Re: using enum versus tiny int and lookup table
Posted by: laptop alias
Date: April 16, 2008 04:07PM

I can't pretend to offer a definitive response but I'll have a stab at an answer:

Enum is marginally quicker, but significantly less flexible.

So, where there's only likely to be a finite number of values ('yes','no','maybe' or 'Alabama','Arkansas'...'Wyoming' - for instance) or where performance is crucial go with enum. Where the likelihood is that values will need to be inserted, modified, or deleted on a fairly regular basis (relative to the no. of queries ordinarily performed on this data), go with tinyint.

I guess it's a judgement call. I prefer the lookup option because it's so easy to see what values are present in the lookup table, and I don't deal with the kinds of tables, or frequency of queries, where performance would ever be an issue.

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Re: using enum versus tiny int and lookup table
April 16, 2008 04:07PM


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