Well, the reason I'm using a comma-delimited list as opposed to a child table, is that I have no need for the values as individual entities.

As an example, I have a multi-select combo box in my application, which stores a list of the countries that the user has selected.

What I want, is to be able to save what the user selected, so when they re-load it, they have their entries still.

As such, all I would need to do is grab the field with the comma delimited list of countries, then perform a split() command in my application, and populate the combo box accordingly.

Were I to use a child table for this purpose, for every one of the combo boxes in my application, I would need to have another table, for the sole purpose of storing that entry. Just creates more overhead than I would rather have.