Re: ENUM like data type

From: KÖPFERL Robert <robert(dot)koepferl(at)sonorys(dot)at>
To:
Cc: pgsql-sql(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: ENUM like data type
Date: 2005-06-29 12:40:08
Message-ID: ED4E30DD9C43D5118DFB00508BBBA76EB167AF@neptun.sonorys.at
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|
|I personally think that the ENUM data type is for databases
|that are not well
|designed. So, if you see the need for ENUM, that means you
|need to re-think
|your data design.
|

I disagree. In several relations (views of the world) one needs to have a
hand full of well defined values while
integers or bools are not appropriate and strings are too free form.
For example male female or true and false. Whilst the second has a well
known type, other things like a telephone number type don't have such type.
So a new one should be created instead of (varchar/ xy between 4 and 8). One
might argue that new 1:n relations with integrity shall be established but
this is in my eyes overkill for a constant number of values.
Also think of schema export without data. These values are part of the
schema data but not the schema itself which in this sense is wrong

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