It's about performance. if you'll have marriage status (single/married/divorced/etc) in table marriagestatuses, and using belongs_to/has_many via marriagestatus_id, and not using :include => marriagestatuses in you 'queries', db will do a lot of queries just for a few enumerables.
so each of us have to decide whether to use another 'enumerate table' or nor tom Billee D. wrote: > Sometimes it''s a matter of taste or design constraint, but why not > use a small join table and a foreign key? ENUM is also a great choice, > as these guys have pointed out, but sometimes there is a bit of > overhead -- but you shouldn't worry about that until it becomes an > issue. Personally, I find it easier to maintain a simple join table > and FK relationships than to mess with ENUM field types. > > I don't know if this is still applicable, but it seems like there is a > bit of data massaging in Rails for the ENUM type (Rails converts it > internally to VARCHAR): > > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/2005-January/001536.html > > I like to let the database do as much work as it can, :-) > > HTH! > > Billee D. > > On May 7, 4:43 am, Vipin <[email protected]> wrote: >> in a database table if there is a field which has a certain set of >> fixed values. for example >> staus => {Single, Married, Divorced } >> OR >> state => {California, Albama, Olaska ...} >> >> so what should be preferred way out of the following for storing the >> values >> >> 1. Keep the field as "string(Rails)" VARCHAR(MySQL) itself ....and >> while showing the field just show the field value. >> >> 2. Keep the field internally as a code like {:california => >> 01, :albama => 02, washington => 03 ....} but while showing the state >> show only the corresponding state. >> >> By using option 2, a certain disadvantage is extra computation time >> required to find out corresponding state name based on code when >> showing the state field to user. But an advantage could be in terms of >> smaller database. In my opinion, saving 01 as an integer could save >> significant space than storing "california" if number of records >> happen to be in tens of thousands . >> >> please suggest ?? >> >> vipin > -- =============================================================================== Tomas Meinlschmidt, MS {MCT, MCP+I, MCSE, AER}, NetApp Filer/NetCache www.meinlschmidt.com www.maxwellrender.cz www.lightgems.cz =============================================================================== --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
