Storing application permissions in a database <p>I'm developing an application for our company that eventually will have lots of ways of restricting users to particular sections/modules. While the application is still small, I'd like to move to a new method of storing permissions that, as the application grows, will remain easy to maintain and query.</p> <p>Currently in our MySQL database we have a table called "user" which stores the user's ID, username and password. In a separate table called "user_acl" is the following:</p> <pre><code>user_acl_id acl_root acl_news_read acl_news_write acl_news_modify acl_reports_read acl_reports_write acl_reports_modify acl_users_read acl_users_write acl_users_modify </code></pre> <p>We only have 3 modules at the minute, but over time more will be created and permissions for each will need to be added.</p> <p>Rather than create a column for each permission, is there any other way or storing this information?</p>