3 ms·

so much better than individual boolean columns cluttering up your user table.

• kbenson 11y ago
  Poe's law in action. I can't tell if you are serious, but if you are, there are generally database constructs to help with this (if the database doesn't just outright support condensing bit fields or a specific type for sets) in a way that doesn't make it impossible to read easily from the database. You're basically making your data unusable without the separate code you've written to parse that field, which can be really annoying in many, many instances (such as debugging!). Edit: It's worth noting that one way to use a complex structure in the database without making it too dependent on external code would be to create some stored procedures for setting, updating and viewing the structure. In this case, that would be some functions that took the field value, and extracted the individual bits into a result, or allowed updating a specific flag. That would keep how the data is represented within the purview of the database, but you're stuck with a bunch of SQL functions that approximate what your code is doing in the application, which is a pain. Thankfully, a lot of database systems acknowledged this a long time ago and provided constructs to make it easier.