Table design for application options

From: Bugblatter <nospam_at_spambucket.foo>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 09:38:59 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <cpp0ni$mef$1@titan.btinternet.com>

If I have an application that has a handful of configuration options, what is a good way to store these options in a table?

e.g.

feature_x_enabled    boolean
default_currency_symbol    character
default_currency_name    string

and so on

The obvious way, to me, is a table with one row with a column for each option. However this table would need to be redefined every time an option is added - making deployment of updates more complex. It also seems a bit strange to design a table that will only ever hold one row.

I'm not sure whether it might be better to have a table with two columns: option_name and option_value. The latter could be a string value and would then have to be converted to/from other datatypes as appropriate. I'm not sure Codd would approve :-)

What type of table structure do other apps use for this type of info? Received on Wed Dec 15 2004 - 03:38:59 CST