What is the best way to manage permissions for a web application - bitmask or database table?

Question

I\'m considering the best way to design a permissions system for an \"admin\" web application. The application is likely to have many users, each of whom could be assigned a

Answer 1

Permissions are usually key words with a 1, 0 or null (indicating inherit). With an bit system, you probably cannot create indexes on the user id and permission keyword; instead, you would have to scan every record to get the permission value.

I would say go for the first option. It seems to me the better solution:

create table permissions (
    user_id INT NOT Null,
    permission VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    value TINYINT(1) NULL
)
alter table `permissions` ADD PRIMARY KEY ( `user_id` , `permission` )