title: mysql: using one field to contain many "fields" to save on fields
body: <p>I have a project which needs an Excel GUI (client's request) with a backend mysql db/table requiring almost 90 fields.
  (almost 60 fields are duplications of 6 fields.)</p>
  
  <p>After giving it some thought, I ended up creating a table with 11 fields: 10 searcheable fields, and one <strong>big</strong> field which can contain up to 60 fields "together", separated by ":"</p>
  
  <p>So a record on that <strong>big</strong> field would be look something like this:</p>
  
  <p><strong>charge1:100:200:200::usd</strong>:charge2:1000:2000:2000::usd:<strong>charge3:150:200:200:250:USD</strong>, and so on</p>
  
  <p>As you can see, these are blocks of 6 fields and can be up 10 of these "blocks", but never more than 255 characters altogether.</p>
  
  <p>None of these "fields" need to to be indexed nor searched for (that's done on the other 10 fields)</p>
  
  <p>What I am doing is "SELECT *" query (with an Excel GUI) of the 11 fields and then (with VBA) I separate these values to columns (this takes less than 1 second).
  With VBA I display the data on certain fields within the Excel "form".</p>
  
  <p>This is working fine and I am very happy with the results, as I was looking for a light, simple and super fast solution, and it is.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Is there a "technical" reason for not doing this ?</strong></p>
  
  <p>Perhaps fields with too many characters might give problems ????</p>
  
  <p>I understand there are many ways of handling this, however this is a small project and I am looking for a simple solution that works, not a complex one (with too many tables and/or fields) </p>
  
  <p>Since the GUI is an excel interface I don't want to make it too complex if there isn't need for that.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance for your input.</p>