JPA Enum ORDINAL vs STRING

Question

It\'s possible to define enumerations in JPA using either

@Enumerated(EnumType.ORDINAL)

or

@Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
         


        

Answer 1

It's likely that ORDINAL is more efficient, but that's minor. There are a few downsides to ORDINAL:

• it is less readable in the database
• if you reorder your enum definitions the database will not be consistent.

With STRING you can't rename your enums.

Pick one of them and use it throughout the whole application - be consistent.

If your database is going to be used by other clients/languages - use STRING, it's more readable.