Question

I am trying to design my first database and I have found that I have quite a few different "flags" that I want to keep of in the database:

Active      # Shows whether the item submission has been completed
Indexed     # Shows whether the item has been indexed
Reminded        # Shows whether the “expiring email” has been sent to the user
Error       # Shows whether there is an error with the submission
Confirmation    # Shows whether the confirmation email has been sent

Other than just having a Boolean field for these, is there a clever way of storing these details? I was wondering if I had these under a status group in the database with an ID for every connotation (32) and just link to that.

Answer 1

Unless there is some reason to do otherwise, I’d recommend simply adding those five boolean (or bit) columns to the item table.