(many rows + two tables) or (one table + comma separated values in one field)

Question

Hi,

I know that to have a mysql column whose content is a string of values separated by commas is not the standard. However, if I will never need to search by such values (they are processed by third program) and separating them would result in many new rows and a new table: would it be justified to keep it as a comma-separated string (case 1)?

Case 1: 
id | content   | description| comments|
1  | 1,2,3,4,5 | blah blah  | blah    |
2  | 1,2,3,4,5 | blah blah  | blah    |
3  | 1,2,3,4,5 | blah blah  | blah    |
4  | 1,2,3,4,5 | blah blah  | blah    |

Case 2:

id | description| comments|       | id | conten_value|
===========================       | 1  |  1          |
1  | blah blah  | blah    |       | 1  |  2          |
2  | blah blah  | blah    |       | 1  |  3          |
3  | blah blah  | blah    |       | 1  |  4          |
4  | blah blah  | blah    |       | 1  |  5          |
                                  | 2  |  1          |
                                  | 2  |  2          |
                                  | ...|  ...        |
                                  | 4  |  5          |

thanks!

Answer 1

No. Don't do that or you will get on the front page of TheDailyWTF.