In my database design, I tend to store some variable that is meant to be acting as a ROLE or TYPE as SMALLINT. For example :
CREATE TABLE `house` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`type` smallint(11) NOT NULL,
)
And in php, I do
define('HOUSE_SMALL_TYPE', '0');
define('HOUSE_MEDIUM_TYPE', '1');
So in php, in SELECT queries I do :
$this->db->query("SELECT * FROM house
WHERE type=?;", HOUSE_SMALL_TYPE);
My questions are :
1. In the php part, is there is a better way to do this ?
2. In the mysql itself, does mysql also has global define functionality (like the define in php) ? I also want to do kind of SELECT * FROM house WHERE type = HOUSE_SMALL_TYPE in mysql query.