Bit Varying vs New Column

Hi There,

I have a property on a web form that is multi-select so the property can
have multiple values. Normally I'd create separate column or a separate row
for each value. I am thinking of using the BIT VARYING() data type though
and storing the selected values as a bit mask. So I have several related
questions:

1. Any general comments on how this performs?
2. Does someone have an example of a query where clause with the values in
the BIT VARYING column being compared to a bit mask?
3. Does someone have a JDBC example. I've tried String, BYTE[], Blob, byte[]
as the Java type and none seem to work.

Thanks
Barry