Another question about how Vanilla works...

jesusphreak

I noticed that the custom user values are stored inside a serialized table within the LUM_User table, under the column "Attributes". I am considering something similar for my own application. What I was wondering was if there were any performance issues on doing things like this verses storing these values as regular columns? Would such an approach be just as useful/efficient if it were not only custom user values, but perhaps sitewide values that every single user had? Thanks for any help as always.

lech

I'm gonna take a stab and say it's faster to just pull all your data from one row in a table rather than multiple rows and tables and break it down from within there. Not exactly my cup of tea when the content there becomes extremely large and you have to go in by hand to break it down, but I suppose it works if you're up to the challenge.

Mark

I didn't think there would be a performance gain going from multiple columns in one table to a single column in one table, but there surprisingly was a bit of a gain there. The only reason I went to a single column with serialized data was to enable extension authors to easily create new user customizations (Rather than having to add new columns to the user table). At the end of the day, however, you do take a small functionality loss when you go to a single column because you can't then use those values to do things like limiting a query based on user preference. IE. only pull users who have X preference turned on.