Custom fields schema

[Shane H. W. Travis]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2005, Myk Melez wrote:

> While weighing Sean's success with FAD at his installation, we should
> also weigh the success of FAC on hundreds of Bugzilla installations for
> a number of years, both for standard fields and for custom ones, not to
> mention the general success of FAC in database design.

Something else to weigh: Are any of those 'hundreds of installations' (where
do you get this figure from anyway?) making any effort to improve Bugzilla
by re-committing their code? Do they have a developer who is willing to
commit to the multiple re-writes and constant criticism that's going to be
necessary to get a patch of this size and magnitude landed on the trunk?

AIUI, Sean has already had to develop this locally -- because his bosses
told him to. He is now trying to make the results of his efforts available
to Bugzilla, because it's something that people have been griping about
wanting done for the last five years... and he's basically being told to go
piss up a rope because his design isn't good enough. Way to foster major
contributions! Funny thing is that it's good enough to hold 187 custom
fields at his site... but that's not good enough for us (or, more
specifically, for Myk).

If one of FAC/FAD were a complete abomination, and implementing it that way
would be universally looked back on as a horrendous mistake... then
absolutely I agree that the code shouldn't be taken just for the sake of
having it...  but that doesn't seem to be the case here. There are benefits
and trade-offs to each method. Each one has its proponents and its
detractors, and this discussion is rapidly taking on some characteristics of
a Religious Flame War.

Working code (and dedicated developers) trumps beautiful theories nine times
out of ten, in my books.

Shane H.W. Travis       | The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing
travis at sedsystems.ca    |  because you can only do a little.
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan |   Do what you can.  -- Sydney Smith