For the field of the flag, I usually use CHAR (1), so I have a few important, but internal values, such as 'A', 'E', 'D'- I do not use the values of consecutive integers in that because they did not disclose the information!
These flag values - even if yours are "more readable", are still displayed through constants, so that "magic values" do not appear in the code. (Unfortunately, they should still appear in Views and whatnot.)
Be careful when combining flags: if a flag tries to represent too much (for example, more than a small discrete set of values), then it is probably too complex and should be divided into several columns / relations.
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