data with dynamic schema stored in a column as a property list.

[Elim Qiu]

Hi, instead of xml, i stored arbitrary data of the form 
(the actual usage of such mechanism is for more fancy stuff,
say, dynamic configuration, otherwise this is really not necessary)

{
  name = "Fn, Ln";                             // string value
  gender = F;                                     // single word string
  interests = (reading,"drive fast");       // array
  children = (
     { lastName = Howe; firstName = Sam; gender = M; dob = "1994-10-07 16:59:26"; },
     { lastName = Howe; firstName = Ann; gender = F; dob = "1998-01-26  04:09:12"; }
  );
  creditCards = {
     visa = "XXXXXXXXXXX-xxxxx";
     master = "YYYYYYYYYY-yyyy";
  };
}

This is called plist and the depth of the hierarchy can go arbitrary deep (unknown 
limit). And it can be converted back
and forth from dictionary object by a framework. 

My task is to find out ways of querying a column holds such text data? say, find out 
whether there is certain key or
whether a key has certain value. I got some solution via regular expression feature of 
MySQL.

The column type that I use is text. My question now is how to make the whole thing 
perform good. In other words, 
for regular expression querying, should I index the column for performance? If so, 
what kind of index should I use?

Thanks a lot.