Well, I will be storing the operators in database fields in a table. This table will also store the column name that is being checked and the variable it is being compared with. Basically, this will allow end users to write rules so that if text fields meet certain conditions they are notified by email. A real world example would be so that if a car sale is made for over $50,000 the boss is notified. In this case the column name might be sale_amount and the comparison variable $50,000. The operator database field obviously would be '>='; So when a new row is injected in the database recording a car sale, the rules table is checked, and if the sale amount is over 50k, the boss is notified.