Custom fields schema

[Paulo Casanova]

Hi all!

I was away on (lovely :)) holidays and when I came I was (positively) 
suprised to see so much discussion. We have been working (internally) on 
CF for quite some time but with a very different approach.

I fell some degree of unrealism on these discussions on CF 
implementations. Firstly, I see too much emphasis on FAC and FAD and 
RDBMS theory. I work with SGBDs for several years and can state with 
that, with MySQL, they're both irrelevant. Either will work. MySQL is 
(1) too limited and (2) too good within its limits.

[Some unimportant notes to support what I'm saying: if you'd be working 
with Oracle things would be much different because other factors such as 
histogram computation, query optimization, index analysis, locking 
policy and other "features" might make both designs work with very 
different levels of performance on different usage patterns. With MySQL, 
however, I think we're discussing peanuts.]

Unfortunately I see too much discussion on *how it does* instead of 
*what it does*.

My opinion, anyway, if it is at all relevant, is that other problems 
should be taken care of before discussing FAC or FAD.

Actually, because I have read hundreds or emails today on BZ and are, 
therefore, somewhat lost, I would like to pose a simple question: do we 
know already *what* are we going to do? I mean, what functionalities 
will CF provide?

1. Can we have typed CFs? Dates, numbers, floats, URLs or it is just text?
2. Are there validation rules for CFs? Plug-ins, regexs?
3. Can we have "derived" or "computed" CFs?
4. Are complex datatypes (such as timetracking) implementable as CFs?
5. Can we make our own plug-ins for data validation?
6. How will we decide which CFs are available for each bug? Are all CFs 
available for all bugs? Can CFs be enabled/ disabled or shown/ hidden 
based on other field values?

BTW, we do have some effort available to work on this but we need a plan 
:( I see too much flame and too little fuel :). I would much prefer 
using available effort to support BZ's standard implementation and, 
honestly, I don't give a damn on whether we FAC or FAD... and I think 
nobody will... ever.

Best,
Paulo