[Koha-devel] Extended attributes, making them generic ?

[Paul Poulain]

Hi Koha-devel,

We've a customer that is asking for new -probably specific- fields in
the subscription. For example, what they called: "subscription origin".

I was wondering if a good way to do that would be to transform our
"borrowers attributes" to become "extended attributes". Those extended
attributes being managed as patron, subscription, acquisition,...
attributes.

What it means :
 * changing the table name ! (now, it's borrowers_attributes and
borrowers_attribute_types)
 * removing foreign keys to borrowers table.
 * add a field "scope" (or similar name), that would be borrower,
subscription, acquisition, ...
 * update all the code to handle this "scope" field. For example,
borrower_attributes.borrowernumber would become
"extended_attributes.externalid", pointing to the borrowernumber, the
subscriptionid or the ordernumber.

What do you think of the idea ?
(I don't promize that, even if everybody says it's a wonderful idea, we
will do it)
-- 
Paul POULAIN - BibLibre
http://www.biblibre.com
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