Date: 06/27/08 (MySQL Communtiy)    Keywords: no keywords

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-Attribute-Value_model

Been roaming around to find anyone's experience with the above storage model.    My biggest concern is for performance/speed.... EAV seems like it would be perfect for my new projects needs: categorized directory of businesses ranging from Starbucks to 5 star restuarants, hotels/motels, muesuams, and just about everything else.    It doesn't make sense to build a huge veritable cloud of individual relational tables to support all these different venues and businesses, because hotels can have bars/restuarants,  retail stores have coffee shops, and a bunch of other contradictions will only lead me into flags and short-circuit code.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/mysql/130173.html