maximum enum usage in schema

Question

i need to populate a table column which takes one of 30 different string values. Is it advisable to use enum here for speed up processing . Can anyone suggest better solution which is reasonably optimum for storage and processing(comparison)?

Answer 1

you are most probably better of by putting the string values in a different table and joining them into your table by (TINYINT) id. it is a much cleaner and more maintainable approach, and the performance difference (with proper setup and indexing) is neglectable.