[thesite] User page data

[Michele Foster]

Wow .. Rudy, thanks a million for this email.  I'm not even going to bother
summarizing it, we'll just refer to it directly.  :)

I have a couple of questions ..


----- Original Message -----
From: "rudy" <r937 at interlog.com>

<snipped tonnes>

| the attributes will be "phone," "url," "cat," "sexual orientation," and/or
| whatever else we may want to use and/or the members choose to add


Members choose to add their own attributes.  Are these member-created
attributes linked in any way to the user?  Or once a member creates a new
attribute, all members can then use that attribute for themself?

How do we account for things like, "Telephone (Work)" or "Work Telephone" ?
i.e. two attributes that are the same thing, just worded different ?

I'm not real crazy about allowing members to add attributes; I would prefer
if the template has "standard" attributes, and if anyone wants something
else added, it gets "approved" beforehand, so that we don't end up with
redundant attributes.  What do others think?  (Or am I misunderstanding?)



|
| CREATE TABLE MEMBATTR
|
|   MEMBATTRID  NUMBER (8)    NOT NULL,
|   MEMBERID    NUMBER (8)    NOT NULL,
|   ATTRID      NUMBER (8)    NOT NULL,
|   SEQ         NUMBER (2)    NOT NULL,
|   PRIV        NUMBER (1)    NOT NULL,
|   ATTRVALUE   VARCHAR2 (255),
|   REMARKS     VARCHAR2 (255),
|   PRIMARY KEY ( MEMBATTRID ) ) ;
|
|
| all the fields should be self-explanatory except ATTRVALUE and REMARKS
|
| if not, holler
|
| ATTRVALUE is where the actual value gets stored
|
| so for my phone number, the MEMBATTR record would have MEMBERID pointing
to
| my MEMBER row, ATTRID pointing to the "Phone Number" ATTRIBUTE row, and
| ATTRVALUE would be the actual digits
|
| REMARKS is so that i can distinguish home numbers, work numbers, etc.
|

Ok, so the intent of "Remarks" is to further define the actual attribute?
IOW, we will only have one attribute of Telephone Number, and the member
fills in the Remarks to indicate what that number is for?  Display wise, how
do we link Remarks back to the attribute?  And, do we prefill (I don't see
how we can) various Remarks?  Usability wise, I'm struggling to come up with
a good way to present the forms to the member that they fill out.


| so item #3 for the cold fusion coders is the administrative page to
| add/change/delete any member data
|
| (is 255 characters enough?  we can increase it)


If we look at Erik's sample page for n.e.o. (http://neo.evolt.org) and take
into consideration what Isaac suggested the other day, I would think 255 is
not enough for only certain attributes (Portfolio, SoapBox).  The question
becomes, what is the Max (i.e. memo field, I dunno what they are in Oracle)
amount allowed?  And, do we "really" want to use Max amount for each
attribute?  Isn't this database no-no #1?  i.e. using memo fields to store
10 characters of data is not a good idea.


|
| the only thing i haven't settled on is whether ATTRIBUTE should have a SEQ
| field, or whether the SEQ field in MEMBATTR governs all the values for
that
| member -- e.g. i might want my home number, then home address, then work
| number, then work address, etc., which would not be possible if numbers
and
| address had a higher order sort sequence...  and also, who defines what
the
| ATTRIBUTE sequence values should be?
|

I'd say it should be member-assigned.  i.e. they build their page based on
what information they provide and in what order they would like that
information to appear on the page.  Code wise, I guess we'll have to check
for sequence values for each user, in that they don't use the same seq value
twice?


Thanks again Rudy .. very helpful summarization.


Michele