On Thu, 9 Feb 2006 11:23:07 -0800, Adrian Rossouw <adrian@bryght.com> wrote :

On 08 Feb 2006, at 8:28 PM, Chris Johnson wrote:

...

It does not presently, but Drupal could know the field sizes in the database tables. However, is that worth doing? (I'm presently developing a database abstraction layer for my employer where the db layer figures out the metadata, like field sizes, on the fly so that the applications need not know anything at all about it.)

I want to do this for 4.8.

it simplifies the install files (which are in core now), and allows us to possibly automate some of the _update_x function creation.

essentially db_create_table('name', array('field' => 'type', 'field' => 'type'); etc.

keeping track of all the columns in the database is important for stuff like views and relationships too.

It would also make supporting other database engines easier. Imagine optimized sql for each db. Wouldn't that be great. Pat