C# ASP.net profile versus customize a membership table

Question

what's the best?

use a profile table to store information that's not present in membership table (like country, age, etc.), or customize a membership?

thanks

Answer 1

Membership data should typically be comprised of information that relates to authentication. i.e. security.

Profile is typically the appropriate place to store user meta data. i.e. personalization.

These 2 types of data serve different purposes and the segregation enables a clean separation of concerns in the providers.

An exception to this could be considered if there is some non-standard meta data that directly relates to authentication/authorization.

Whenever possible, it is best to use the built in providers. This reduces the amount of code you have to design, implement, test and maintain. And Membership, i.e. security, is not something that you want to find bugs in.

So, I would consider using the tried, tested and true membership provider and if you want table based meta, use a custom profile provider such as http://www.asp.net/downloads/sandbox/table-profile-provider-samples