Stuart wrote: >Got anything to back that up? > >http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2008/01/24/enum-fields-vs-varchar-vs-int-joined-table-what-is-faster/ Thanks, that'll do nicely. Even that strapped chicken test with tables that are likely cached shows enum as the fasted, albeit only marginally. Where disc reads are required, or even (hand-to-forehead) a large table scan, the difference would be much more significant. Not that I'd advocate enum columns widely instead of char or varchar (or text); horses for courses, whatever suits the data best. As I said in the last post, knowing what your data requires leads to better results than picking in advance whether to use char or varchar (or text). Measuring is even better. -- Ross McKay, Toronto, NSW Australia "There is more to life than simply increasing its speed." - Gandhi -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php