I wanted to add categories to my table. For speed and simplicity, I just added five varchar fields to the table: cat0..cat4. Instead of a big OR-expression in my WHERE clause I did this:
SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE @Category IN (cat0,cat1,cat2,cat3,cat4)
The key insight for me was you can add fields in the comma-seperated list, instead of values. And it’s more readable too. But it has the same execution plan as the “big OR”-variant.