On 6/4/07, David Metzler <metzlerd@metzlerd.com> wrote:
And speaking of itches, I've always been a little bothered by the fact that flexinode and CKK store there data in generic tables. .
In this approach, adding fields would execute DDL not DML for the storage mechanism.
So my question is, has this been considered?
My feeling and recollection (which may be completely wrong) was that DDL was avoided long ago because often the webserver's database username did not have table create/alter privileges. At some hosting companies, this is still the case, and for good reason: it provides better security and accountability. But since we now have a self-installing database schema and lots of other DDL statements, perhaps the aversion to such as use of DDL is not so strong. I'm in general agreement with you. Except in specific instances, I really don't like serialized data (another technique used for avoiding DDL) and generic tables in an application where the database is one of the primary bottlenecks.