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

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 7:03 AM, Paul Poulain <paul.poulain at biblibre.com>wrote:

> 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.
>

I think a generalized attribute system would be useful.  Besides the ones
you've listed, I can immediately see uses for bib-level attributes.


> What it means :
>  * changing the table name ! (now, it's borrowers_attributes and
> borrowers_attribute_types)
>  * removing foreign keys to borrowers table.
>

However, I don't think it should be implemented in such a way that it drops
foreign key constraints, of which we need more in Koha, not fewer.
 Instead, I propose that each class we want to give extended attributes to
get a separate table.  Each attribute table would have the same structure,
allowing for code (and DBIC classes) to be generic, e.g.,

subscription_attributes:
  subscriptionid int(11)
  code varchar(10) -> attribute_types.code
  attribute varchar(255)

aqorder_attributes
  ordernumber init(11)
  code varchar(10) -> attribute_types.code
  attribute varchar(255)

... and so on.

Note that the proposed attribute_types table (which could be created by
renaming borrower_attribute_types) could be shared

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
Manager of Implementation
Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
email:  gmc at esilibrary.com
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Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org &
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