Re: [HACKERS] Enticing interns to PostgreSQL

On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 17:14:57 -0500,
  "Jim C. Nasby" <decibel@decibel.org> wrote:
>
> As for varchar, they're orthogonal issues. If you have a large table
> with a limited number of text values that could change over time you'd
> want to store an integer ID in the large table, but make it easy to deal
> with new values being added.

Maybe. Using the integer ID saves space, but requires a join on lookups that
compare to the keywords. So there is a time space trade off doing this.
Either way maintenance is similar. Domains are another option, but updating
the keyword list requires DDL and you don't have the cascade options
available directly for renaming or removing previously valid keywords.
Though for short lists of keywords that change infrequently, domains may
be the best performing option.