As William pointed out, one would usually create a Hobbies table with your 20 hobbies, then there would be a 'join' table that connects one or more profiles to one or more hobbies with foreign keys. This is the standard normalization practice for this type of data relationship.
With proper indexing, you should not have to worry about performance unless you start talking about millions upon millions of records. If so, then some system architects will look at exporting this type of transactional data into views and|or data warehouses where the data is somewhat de-normalized but optimized for searches and reports at the expense of updates and additions. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| ColdFusion 8 - Build next generation apps today, with easy PDF and Ajax features - download now http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/coldfusion/cf8_beta_whatsnew_052907.pdf Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:288739 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
