Shorter Table Prefix for Plugins

1 Requirements

According to the ILIAS development guide all database tables of pluguns must be named with the plugin slot and plugin id as a prefix. For question type plugins like the STACK questions this would result in a prefix like: "qpl_qst_xqcas_". As Oracle supports only 22 characters for table names, only 8 characters are left to give the table name a useful meaning.
 
I propose to allow shorter table names for plugins, just using the plugin_id, e.g. "xqcas". This requires no development, just a decision and change in the DevGuide.

2 Status

• Scheduled for: Not scheduled yet (will be set by Jour Fixe)
• Funding: Funded by Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
• Maintainer: (will be set by Jour Fixe)
• Implementation of the feature is done by (company, developer)
• Contract settled: (fill in "Yes" if a contract is already settled, otherwise "No" )
• Tested by / status: (name, e-mail), (status information set after implementation)

3 Additional Information

Contact the following persons if you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding:

• Information about concept: fred.neumann@fim.uni-erlangen.de
• Information about funding: (name, e-mail)
• Information about implementation: (name, e-mail)

4 Discussion

Alex Killing 24 Apr 2014: I think both ways do not really prevents name conflicts. I do not have strong preferences here and would like to know the opinion of other plugin developers. Sometimes I think that "vendor" prefixes would be a good idea.

JF 26 May 2014: There have been no strong preferences in the JF to change the guideline. There are also pros with the existing guideline, e.g. that tables belonging to the same slot are grouped together (qpl_qst_...)  when listed alphabetically (e.g. in phpMyAdmin). We will discuss this on the core dev meeting tomorrow again.

5 Implementation

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