David Schnepper wrote:

>Thanks for the details of your application -- I see why you added
>customization features.

>Now, another question -- what is the problem with having the schema
>modifications made by a client-side tool
>(like you do currently) -- eg: why does this need to be in SP ?

The engine creates a lot of extra tables that the user doesn't know about.
For example, one of our column types is a history type, regardless of the
actual datatype of the column. This enables all the changes in the column
value to be preserved with a date stamp. The SET SP that updates the
history column, but also inserts the new value in the history table.

From this you can see that there is a lot of integrity to be maintained and
it is possible that another programmer may screw things up (if he writes a
client to fiddle with the schema).

If all this is encapsulated by SPs, it is a cleaner solution.

Louis van ALphen