What is the difference between enum and set in MySQL?

Question

Difference between SET and ENUM. The difference between SET and ENUM is that SET column can contain multiple values and whereas an ENUM can hold only one of the possible values. The SET type is similar to ENUM whereas the SET type is stored as a full value rather than an index of a value as with ENUM.

What is an enum and set data type in MySQL?

MySQL stores ENUM string values internally as decimal integers of values 1 through n for a column with n members in the enumeration. MySQL represents SET string values as a bitmap using one bit per value, thus the values are stored internally as 1, 2, 4, 8, ..... up to 65,535 for a maximum of 64 members.

What is the use of enum in MySQL?

The ENUM data type in MySQL is a string object. It allows us to limit the value chosen from a list of permitted values in the column specification at the time of table creation. It is short for enumeration, which means that each column may have one of the specified possible values.

Should you use enum in MySQL?

In MySQL, you can use the ENUM data type to specify a list of permitted values in a column. For instance, in a customers table, you can create a column named customer_type and explicitly tell MySQL to enumerate a list of values, for example INDIVIDUAL , BUSINESS and NGO , when creating the table.

Why we use set in MySQL?

The MySQL SET datatype allows us to compare multiple values without using complex JOIN operations. We can manipulate the set with binary functions to do complex comparisons by comparing bit values on a single column instead of comparing multiple rows of multiple tables.

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