The current enum support in GORM is quite good, but if you use an enum in high-volume domain class (i.e. a lot of rows) than the current approach on mapping the name() value becomes quite inefficient. Switching to the ordinal value can get you in troubles when performing refactorings/migrations. So I'd like to introduce an enhanced solution for the problem: If the enum has an instance method "getId()" which has a return type that can be mapped as a hibernate basic type (string, int, double, ...) then grails automatically uses a custom usertype (IdentifierEnumType), which performs the mapping using that return value. The id-to-enum value mapping is performed using a bidirectional inmemory map, so it should be quite efficient. (the feature can be turned of with a configuration option in Config.groovy) Some example enums that would be mapped with that usertype: (Groovy version - mapped to the short string value) public enum Country { AUSTRIA('at'), UNITED_STATES('us'), GERMANY('de'); final String id; Country(String id) { this.id = id; } } (Java Version) public enum Genre { UNKONWN(-1), SCIENCE_FICTION(0), FANTASIY(1), BIOGRAPHY(2), NON_FICTION(3); private final int idVal; Genre(int id) { this.idVal = id; } public int getId() { return idVal; } }