Should we remove ability to turn on user and bug deletion?

[Toomas Toomsalu]

My experience as administrator and developer of the enterprise business
systems  supports Kevin's point that a deletion record from interrelated
database is complicated process that will create referential integrity
problems.

Instead of deletion of record (user, customer, work order) we introduced
Active flag that can be turned off if there are related records (like
bugs related to user in Bugzilla)

If there is2 step deletion: 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: developers-owner at bugzilla.org
[mailto:developers-owner at bugzilla.org] On Behalf Of Benton, Kevin
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 10:19 PM
To: developers at bugzilla.org
Subject: Re: Should we remove ability to turn on user and bug deletion?

 

> -----Original Message-----

> From: developers-owner at bugzilla.org

[mailto:developers-owner at bugzilla.org]

> On Behalf Of Marc Schumann

> Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 11:05 AM

> To: developers at bugzilla.org

> Subject: Re: Should we remove ability to turn on user and bug

deletion?

> 

> On Apr 4, 2005 10:54 AM, Gervase Markham <gerv at mozilla.org> wrote:

> > The newsgroups are filled with people who have turned on user and

bug

> > deletion, despite the warnings, and got into difficulty. I say we

should

> > remove the Params, and tell people it's not supported, until such

time

> > as someone implements it properly.

> >

> > What do you think?

> 

> User deletion has improved a lot with bug 119485. On user deletion,

> the admin is presented with individual, detailed warnings. Short of

> deleting bugs, related entities are deleted along with the user.

> Leaving the bugs undeleted will cause db inconsistency when overriding

> the corresponding warning. Maybe it's an idea to go for the

> never-inconsistencies way, but I don't think this warrants to make

> user deletion impossible.

 

As a Bugzilla Administrator, it seems like a lot of work at this point

to perform deletions of users if that user has had much activity in the

system at all.  If the user is an assigned-to person, has commented on

bugs, has created activity log entries, attachments, etc., there's a lot

to deleting that user without creating referential problems.  On the

other hand, if we have a "deleted" flag, it would be relatively easy to

handle clean-up because the user should no longer have access to the web

or email interfaces, and there's no need to handle activity log entries

in a special manner because they're still stored in the database.  In

the event a system admin decides they made a mistake, no data has been

lost, they can simply turn the user back on.  In my mind, a user flagged

as deleted would no longer show up in user lists, hyperlinks to them

would be disabled, and the only way to gain access to those users would

be to request to include a listing of deleted users from the user

administration menu, and of course, from MySQL directly.

 

As a Bugzilla programmer, it makes a lot of sense to me to give the

ability to "permanently and completely disable a user" without having to

remove them from the DB.  I believe it would be extremely rare when

administrators would actually want to physically remove "old users" from

the system short of running out of disk space or the user table gets

"too big."  In those cases, I think we need to come up with a way to set

up a default user that all entries can be reassigned to in the event

that a user deletion is required. If not a default user, then I feel we

should give the person performing the deletion the opportunity to pick a

person or assign the bugs back to the person doing the deletion.   In

those cases, a set of updates could be written to update all the user id

foreign keys changing any instance of the user being deleted to the

appropriate user id.  By doing this, we haven't thrown out any

historical information, and we can now completely remove the user from

the system without breaking any references.  It also makes querying the

database relatively easy, giving the administrator immediate access to

any bugs that need to be reassigned after the user has been removed.

 

Another benefit of this auto-reassignment method is that it makes it

easier to back-out any changes made by a real user deletion.  All the

changes made to bugs and other foreign keys containing that user's id

can be reverted because the listing of those changes should be available

in a query.

 

---

Kevin Benton

Perl/Bugzilla Developer

Advanced Micro Devices

 

The opinions stated in this communication do not necessarily reflect the

view of Advanced Micro Devices and have not been reviewed by management.

This communication may contain sensitive and/or confidential and/or

proprietary information.  Distribution of such information is strictly

prohibited without prior consent of Advanced Micro Devices.  This

communication is for the intended recipient(s) only.  If you have

received this communication in error, please notify the sender, then

destroy any remaining copies of this communication.

 

 

 

-

To view or change your list settings, click here:

<http://bugzilla.org/cgi-bin/mj_wwwusr?user=toomas@persimplex.com>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bugzilla.org/pipermail/developers/attachments/20050405/a3565427/attachment.html>