[Koha-bugs] [Bug 35625] Add support for system flag to additional fields

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.koha-community.org]

https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=35625

--- Comment #14 from Katrin Fischer <katrin.fischer at bsz-bw.de> ---
So this feels no like we are trying to implement something like inheritance in
the database. We have a "base" ticket table and we have an additional table for
any specifics. I think I get the idea now.

The idea is very similar to the illrequestattributes, more than to the
patron_attributes. The patron_attributes implement limited functionality for
workflows, while the illrequestattributes are the data storage for any
additional data a backend might need to function properly.

At the moment I believe we are thinking to unify the functionality of:
* OPAC problem reports
* Catalog concerns
* <a third thing I don't manage to remember right now>

As always there is pros and cons to everything. The problems I see with
additional attributes in their key/value form are:
* No FK constraints on database level.
* No proper datatypes. We store everything as a varchar. This can complicate
validation and reporting.
* Ease of writing reports with all columns (libraries have repeatedly told me
they find it hard)

I think there is a use case here... but I am not totally persuaded yet that
it's strong enough for the examples given.

For the reasons mentioned above, I feel like at least biblio_id might be better
off as a column allowing for FK etc. and easy joining with other tables. And
logging it could be of some use for the problem reports too (a lot of
opac-pages are "biblio record" based (detail, isbd, marc, request,
article_request ...) and logging it could allow for interesting reporting)

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