User-defined fields

I work primarily with Oracle, but this question is relevant to just about any RDBMS, I would think.

I have a customer wanting an 'extremely flexible, scalable' database design. Of course, they already have the solution...design a standard relational database, but then allow for users to add their own fields as they need new things to be stored in the database.

The customer doesn't have details about how the RDBMS will work with these fields, just saying that the 'database experts' can figure it out.

Essentially, they talk about tables describing relationships, with the records in the tables holding 'metadata' about the data as well as the data itself. (not a good description, I know, but that's what I have right now...)

My concerns are centered on things like how to handle FK's, indexing, ad-hoc query tools, how the optimizer will work, etc.

I see out on the web that there are many COTS type products that use databases and advertise customized or user-defined fields, but I haven't seen any white papers or other treatises on this idea.

Wondering if anyone could share some insight here.

thanks! Received on Mon Jan 07 2002 - 08:52:04 CST