Thanks for your feedback. It is possible to ensure certain formats for the text column prior to saving it to a database. This makes querying this data quite easy in fact. Just because the user entered in a form like 2/12/1980, doesn't mean it has to get stored in that fashion....I would hope that is obvious, as this should be a concern no matter how you structure your database. A simple validation check solves that one.
Finding a value is then as simple as: select all from users_profile where profile_key = "birthday" and profile value =,>,< "whatever". Not too difficult. Here is an SQL statement that works perfectly: $sql = 'SELECT * FROM `users_profile` WHERE profile_key = \'email \' and profile_value = \'andrewpp...@gmail.com\'; Another example. $sql = 'SELECT * FROM `users_profile` WHERE profile_key = \'zipcode \' and profile_value > \'70000\'; The data is not mangled at all, and is still easily retrievable. It is, however, very flexible. I accept that searching through all text fields can be slower from a performance standpoint than using other types of fields. Andrew --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---