Re: [support] Database : why the type fields are varchars

In response to "melantias toomaate" melantias@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.