I can understand why people might not like the idea of storing multiple column values in one encoded field, but it does occur to me that this would be a great technique for passing values in a web app. instead of http://blah.com?field1=1&field2=5&field3=7

Bitmask all the values selected and pass them encoded

http://blah.com?referringData=00bx7f

then decode on the page to values for SQL or whatever.

You get a lot of things here: users can't fish by inserting other values in the POST string; your POST string looks LEE7 (sorry...:-D); you have a shorter POST string.

If you do want to store bitmasked vals in the DB, then your response data could also be de-coded on the client side using Javascript (if this is supported). The downside there is, you can see Javascript in View Source. But, seems like this technique could help speed up data-intensive web applications.

Just my 2 centavos. Sorry it's off-topic, but hey.