title: Better way to represent user roles in a database
body: <p>Is representing user permissions better in the user table or better in its own permissions table?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Permissions in User table</strong><br/>
  Putting permissions in the user table means making a column for each permission in the user table.  An advantage is queries should run faster because no joins are necessary when relating users to user permissions.  A disadvantage is that having many permissions columns clutters the user table.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Permissions in Permission table joined to User table with many-to-many relationship</strong><br/>
  Doing it this way cleanly separates out the permissions from the user table, but it requires a join across two tables to access user permissions. Database access might be slower, but database design seems cleaner.</p>
  
  <p>Perhaps keeping permissions in a separate table is better when there are many permissions. What are other considerations in making this decision, and which design is better in various situations?</p>