{"id":11050,"date":"2008-02-06T12:51:11","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T09:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2008\/02\/06\/portability-and-flexibility-win-over-performance\/"},"modified":"2008-02-06T12:51:11","modified_gmt":"2008-02-06T09:51:11","slug":"portability-and-flexibility-win-over-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2008\/02\/06\/portability-and-flexibility-win-over-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Portability and flexibility win over performance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I noticed this ticket in WordPress Trac<\/a> – Change enum to varchar<\/a> and went in to see if there is any heated discussion.\u00c2\u00a0 The issue is around field types used in SQL scheme for WordPress tables.\u00c2\u00a0 Certain fields, such post status employed ENUM type<\/a> with a set of allowed values.\u00c2\u00a0 The proposed change in the ticket is to convert them to VARCHAR type<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why the change?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, VARCHAR is just a text field.\u00c2\u00a0 Anyone can put pretty much any string into it.\u00c2\u00a0 It has more flexibility for plugin developers and future changes – no need to tweak the SQL scheme.\u00c2\u00a0 ENUM on the other hand works a little bit faster.<\/p>\n

Side note<\/strong>: I also thought that ENUM provides some extra data validation, assuming the ENUM field is set to NOT NULL, but it turns out this is not the case.\u00c2\u00a0 If you insert a record with a value which is not in the list, the NULL is used.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The change has been approved, the patch was attached, and the world will see it in the next WordPress<\/a> release.\u00c2\u00a0 Once again, it has been proven that human time is much more valuable than machine time.\u00c2\u00a0 Making it easier for plugin developers to extend and change the system has more value than that of a few extra CPU cycles to lookup in strings instead of numbers.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n

I noticed this ticket in WordPress Trac – Change enum to varchar and went in to see if there is any heated discussion.\u00c2\u00a0 The issue is around field types used in SQL scheme for WordPress tables.\u00c2\u00a0 Certain fields, such post status employed ENUM type with a set of allowed values.\u00c2\u00a0 The proposed change in the … Continue reading Portability and flexibility win over performance<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,18,60],"tags":[3066,246,1057,1345,773],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-11050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-programming","category-wordpress","tag-mysql","tag-optimization","tag-performance","tag-portability","tag-sql"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t