I'm creating a table called news_feed, this will log all the actions a user performs.

Lets say I want to store

user1234 deleted article412 at midday

I then need a table like so

timestamp | user_id | subject_type | subject_id | method

.

there would be 5 potential methods to log,

methods = add/edit/delete/update/report

and lets say 2 possible subject_type

subjects = article/comment

I know i could make my own key where 0=add, 1=delete etc etc but this would make my queries cumbersome to use/write as i'd need to keep consulting the key. Is there a MySql type which can read lots of identially values quickly? is this ENUM? how do i use it?!!