Legitimate Uses of the Antipattern
You might improve performance for some kinds of queries by applying denormalization to your database organization. Storing lists as a comma-separated string is an example of denormalization.
Your application may need the data in a comma-separated format and have no need to access individual items in the list. Likewise, if your application receives a comma-separated format from another source and you simply need to store the full list in a database and retrieve it later in exactly the same format, there’s no need to separate the values.
Be conservative if you decide to employ denormalization. Start by using a normalized database organization, because it permits your application code to be more flexible, ...
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