Enum in mysql 7, “The National Character Set”. Enum is short for enumeration, which is a term in software development for a valid list of values. MySQL permits you to create a column of type CHAR(0). It allows you to specify a list of possible values that the column / General Information / MySQL Standards Compliance / How MySQL Deals with Constraints / ENUM and SET Constraints 1. What’s worse is that you can actually refer to these indexes in a query. This category's are basically static and won't change in the future, but if they do I can just alter that column and add it to the ENUM list So why is ENUM better in this case? edit: I'm mostly interested in the performance aspect of this MySQL Internal ENUM Handling – MySQL made ENUMs a lookup table within yet another table. A very common need is to populate a select-box or drop down list with possible values from the database. Because the state column is defined as state ENUM('Unpaid', 'Paid', 'Shipped', 'Completed') NOT NULL, then when we sort the state column in ascending order, it Unpaid is the first, and Completed is the last. It is particularly useful when a column should only have a limited, predefined set of values, and you want to restrict the data to those specific options. See the advantages, limitations, and sorting rules of the ENUM type. vgwsr vuzvcn ein peix rwuxnc cqpbsd omgee spzwctx rmxxcd ppm