Agreed, but the question becomes: where is the line for "shuffling ... too much" and when it "becomes quite unwieldy." I think writing a system for dealing with schema changes is certainly manageable -- and in the case that I believe Hockey wants, which is just adding data/search fields, it would be pretty easy.Ambush Commander wrote:The trouble with shuffling around the database schema too much is that it affects everything else that already is in the database. Not too bad if you're just adding a column, but removing and changing columns becomes quite unwieldy when dealing with large datasets.
PS - This is a great warning you who is infamous for tackling programming challenges that most wouldn't touch with a very long barge pole.