Simon Riggs wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-11-21 at 02:51 +0000, Tom Dunstan wrote:
>
> In the long run, as currently envisaged, enums don't do all that I would
> like.
In a sense they do more than you want. They will provide the ability to
set values much faster than anything using an FK constraint, I expect,
and without having to use any explicit constraint.
> I see the need to performance tune Referential Integrity more
> directly.
>
>
Sure. Go for it. As far as enums go, the only cases I can think of where
that will have any application are:
. you don't use enums because you want strictly vanilla SQL, or
. you don't use enums because you want to be able to alter the set of
allowed values arbitrarily.
That still leaves lots of applications (e.g. those I work on in my day
job) that will benefit from enums.
cheers
andrew