[Revan]

For bitfields, I think the system is abit flawed.
I would think it was a better idea to have a function parse through the array of bitfields (so instead of "[fieldname] => [number],", it would just be "[fieldname],"), adding the incremental bitfield just like we have to do manually now, before running the function currently being ran to prepare the bitfield for SQL insertion.
Then, when the bitfield SQL is converted to array again, a sub-piece of the above function or a different function would parse through the array of bitfields one more time, this time matching up the two arrays thus assigning the correct bitfield with its correct permission field.
This would cause no extra queries, and very little PHP parsing time (unless a bitfield array had 10,000 array keys in it...).

But what do I know, $5 says the vB devs have a much better way lined up for the next vB