basic performance comparison

Question

Do you know which table srtucture is better :

table user  
id  INT pk autoincrement  
name VARCHAR(255)  
email VARCHAR(255)  
statut TINYINT(4) 

The statut can only hold 2 states : 1/2

OR

table user  
id  INT pk autoincrement  
name VARCHAR(255)  
email VARCHAR(255)   
statut VARCHAR(45) 

The statut can only hold 2 states : active/inactive

I'm looking for the fastest way to do select statements such as

SELECT id, name, email   
FROM user  
WHERE statut=:statut

I read somewhere that "integer" types are generally processed faster than "text" types but for some other reasons I would prefer to store the statut with the VARCHAR type.
Is there a way to use statut with VARCHAR type AND that it runs faster ?
Or is the first structure definitively the fastest ?

Answer 1

You could use ENUM if you're absolutely sure that you'll only ever need to store 2 values in that column. Combines the user-friendliness of text with the performance and space-efficiency of integers.