Property Table Updates

[spficklin]

This issue imported from the Chado v1.4 requested changes google doc:

http://gmod.827538.n3.nabble.com/Property-tables-and-units-td4047268.html#a4047297

How to deal with numerical values? Otherwise can’t naively sort or filter values in a query. To solve table property issues, I (Valentin Guignon, Bioversity International) propose to the Chado community to debate and vote on the 5 flavors to keep only one of them. Flavors:

1. replacing existing table by a new table with "typed" properties Pros: keeps the same schema with minor changes on the 'prop tables Cons: some old software may "not like" to see new columns and would need to be updated. Values stored in non-text value fields won’t be seen by old softwares (while they would be seen with 2b and 3b).

2. adding a new table with "typed" properties and keep the old one Pros: backward compatibility… Cons: ...but properties will come from 2 different tables and conflicting values could appear. Double table management.

3. adding a new table with "typed" properties and remove the old one Pros: forces people to be aware and use the new way of storing properties Cons: no backward compatibility 2b) same as 2 with triggers to auto-synchronize the 2 tables Pros: backward compatibility Cons: double data storage, working with the old property table may have side effect issues. 3b) same as 3 with a view and rules in order to have virtual old property tables that would behave just like before but store data in the new table Pros: backward compatibility Cons: inserting/updating through the view replacing the old property tables may have side effect issues.