Merlin Moncure wrote:
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 12:22 PM, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The first time I encountered them, I thought enums were a filthy,
ill-conceived answer to a problem that didn't exist, implemented by people
who didn't understand relational databases. With considerably more
experience under my belt than then, I say now that my original estimation
was too kind.
I think you're being a little too hard on enums here. I was actually
in the anti-enum camp until it was demonstrated to me (and in my own
testing) that using enum for natural ordering vs. fielding the
ordering of the type out to a join is can be a huge win in such cases
where it is important. Relational theory is all well and good, but in
practical terms things like record size, index size, and query
performance are important.
Uhm. Sorry what? Can you demonstrate this particular use?
When I first saw discussion about enumns I kinda hoped they
will be implemented as kind of macro to really map to a table.
But here you go. I'm still looking for a good example to
demonstrate the usefullness of enums (same for arrays for that
matter)
Cheers
Tino
