This seems fairly involved for a problem that should be solved in the database... I mean seriously, this is the kind of thinking that at least in theory is goi

This seems fairly involved for a problem that should be solved in the database... I mean seriously, this is the kind of thinking that at least in theory is going on inside a relational database. If you have a table mapping these strings to values, (or, in a more sane database, it's the way around), you would just do the join and be done with it.