[support] Database : why the type fields are varchars

[Bill Moran]

In response to "melantias toomaate" <melantias at gmail.com>:

> Hi,
> 
> We are going to build a web site using Drupal. I am new to Drupal CMS.
>  While going through the drupal tables, i found that the 'type' field
> in 'node_type' table is varchar. I am eager to know - why the type
> fields are varchars instead of integers.
> I would like to know this because varchars are slow in table joins and
> searching.

That's a painfully arbitrary statement ... can you back it up?

I know that in PostgreSQL, varchars are not significantly slower unless
you're lacking indexes, which is an easy mistake to fix.  Since you don't
mention the backend you're using, I'll play the statistics and guess it's
MySQL, and I don't know if MySQL exhibits the problem you are concerned
with.

-- 
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com