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  • What type of preference are you storing? Boolean? Multiple items? Commented Jul 3, 2009 at 15:10
  • @hopeless - that would be Multiple Items. I tend to lean towards Option 2, but by looking at the rails serialize option, I feel like using Hash as an option, option 1 could be accomplished more or less similar to option 1, there by not having another table and more SQL joins. Any feedback is appreciated. Also what exactly you guys mean by cluttering the USERS table, all the preferences will be stored in preferences column only. Commented Jul 3, 2009 at 16:11
  • @satynos - clutter means the user table is now more confusing because it does more than just (I assume) hold login/name information. If you are serializing, it means more work when you need to look things up, too. Basically you have to parse ALL of the preferences EVERY time you need to know one. Putting the prefs (if there are only a few) as fields on the user table is better than the blob o' prefs because you don't have to look at all the prefs to find out one. Commented Jul 3, 2009 at 17:07
  • thanks for the feedback, so option 2 it is then. Commented Jul 4, 2009 at 16:37
  • 3
    "Basically you have to parse ALL of the preferences EVERY time you need to know one" -- yeah, and parsing YAML is incredibly fast. FWIW, no one gives any real reasons here, it's pure religion. Commented Sep 12, 2009 at 4:54