On 7/13/06, Morbus Iff <morbus@disobey.com> wrote:

...

a:2:{s:4:"Name";s:6:"brenda";s:5:"Phone";s:10:"5555551234";}

That is what is called "serialized" data, generated by serialize(). More documentation at http://us2.php.net/serialize (read the comments for a more verbose explanation). The above is equivalent to this PHP code:

array('Name' => 'brenda', 'Phone' => '5555551234');

only in a database-friendly format.

It's in a format that can be stored in a database, retrieved, unserialized, and used in PHP, but I wouldn't call it "database friendly". Maybe database storable. Database *friendly* would be making a column for Name and a column for Phone so that other tables in the database could do things like joins on the data. My perspective is clouded by being more comfortable on a sql> prompt than in a PHP file, but serialized data in the DB makes me shudder nearly every time I see it. Sorry for the relatively OT rant, but while there are shortcut benefits on the PHP side to doing things like serializing data and storing it in the DB it can lead to inefficiencies and handcuffs in the long run. Databases tend to go really slowly for queries that look like WHERE field LIKE '%Name%\'Brenda\'%' Which is both slow and can generate false matches if the serialized array is sufficiently large. Or a clause like some_table INNER JOIN signup_form_data on some_table.Name = RIGHT(LEFT(field,index(field,'\',\'Phone),len(LEFT(field,index(field,'\',\'Phone))-index(LEFT(field,index(field,'\',\'Phone),'Name\'=>')) Which is slow, can generate false matches, and is relatively obfuscated for what I'm trying to do when compared with a query like: some_table INNER JOIN signup_form_data ON some_table.Name = signup_form_data.Name These query-clauses probably fail miserably when handed to a sql parser, but the idea is clear: serialized arrays are expedient for PHP programmers, but they are database unfriendly. And I'm not calling you out on this, Morbus - you gave a perfect and helpful explanation for the question. I just want to point this out as a sort of motivation to everyone to strive to use better data storage than serialize($foo). Regards, Greg -- Greg Knaddison | Growing Venture Solutions Denver, CO | http://growingventuresolutions.com Technology Solutions for Communities, Individuals, and Small Businesses