I have had this idea that is floating around in my head for at least close to 2 years now, although, it started to brew while working with a different code base I thought that it could also apply here.
My idea is to have a dynamic db column ability. I’ll use the user data as an example.
I would say that most sites need at the bare minimum (for sites that use registration): user name, password, email address
Any other information I think is technically secondary.
So, I was wondering how could you make it so that the site owner could add/delete any other data that they don’t feel is necessary. Now, I’m not talking about turning on/off but rather more as in adding/deleting columns from a table.
So, for example the site owner could add in; location, pim, favorite fast food, favorite gas station, ummm ex-boy/girl friends phone number (don’t ask me why -- these are just examples). with the current system and pretty much every system I’ve seen so far outside of a flat-file perl program force you into what the original prgrammer decided you to live with.
I’ve seen a solution that let’s you psuedo like wise do this by using a catch all column that is defined in another column but if that column get’s wiped out you loose everything! It’s a great work around but not the holy grail. So, I’ve been bating my head around ideas that could use a skinny phpmyadmin that least the site owner to add in their own columns (security on this is really sketchy) and then use a wildcard "*" inplace of every column name that is hard coded (server hit would seem to be heavy) or use snippets/chunks to populate strings that would change depending on what columns that you have "hopefully" improving server performance.
Does anybody have any ideas?
Tangent-Warrior

A solution could be (but probably not the best) to just have a key,value kind of system.
--------------------------------------------
| username | property | value |
--------------------------------------------
| alvin | password | 123345 |
| alvin | name | Alvin Moo |
| alvin | phone | +460999 |
| zeth | password | 5432321 |
| zeth | name | Johnny |
--------------------------------------------
This would make the table "dynamic" as you can add all properties you want in the properties column.
Johnny Chadda
http://johnny.chadda.se
"This is a UNIX virus. Please remove all your files and copy this message to friends."
hmmm, that is a good idea. I’ve just had a long day, so will need to sleep on it so to say.
thanks!!
Tangent-Warrior
