Custom fields schema

[Daniel Berlin]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2005, Steven Suson wrote:

>   I have to agree whole heartedly with this. It seems every time that a 
> discussion of custom fields begins, that it deteriorates into a flame war... 
> And each and every time, the proposed contributor is nit picked to death, 
> until the custom fields discussion dies away. Come on guys! MANY bugzilla 
> users have wanted custom fields for several years now (including my company 
> and I); remember that best is the enemy of good enough.
>

I can't stress enough how true this is.

Myk, i hate to say it, because you are a valued bugzilla contributor, but 
unless you garner more support for your position (which nobody seems to 
have thrown their weight behind, no offense), i believe it is time to say 
"objection noted, let's move on".
This is not a design that is so flawed it is unusable, because there is an 
existence proof that it is usable.

If you truly believe your design is better, i believe it is time for 
you to implement a custom fields patch yourself, so we have two working 
patches to compare, instead of comparing "database theory" and "working 
code".


>
> Steven Suson
>
> Shane H. W. Travis wrote:
>
>> 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
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>> 
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