Like every other db decision... Maybee. The one main reason why you want to do this is for when you do not know the attributes in advance. (If you do not know the API, then a big placeholder for variables is a good and reasonable approach.) However, I do not recommend this approach when possible since it will signfigantly hinder the ability to access the stored variables later, since parsing is required. (Which, when you are dealing with n>(some number here) greatly place a cpu burden on your machine.)) cheers.

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Zak
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate - mysql's philosphy