[wp-hackers] DB options table; useless columns?

[Computer Guru]

Jeremy Visser wrote:
> Matt Mullenweg wrote:
>   
>> They're legacy from when the options UI was completely auto-generated.
>>     
>
> Well why doesn't the upgrade script delete the columns? Or should it?
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>   
That would be nice, but unpractical.
The problem is, then it would delete all columns that aren't in the 
official schema, making really really hard for some plugins to work 
efficiently.

Say I wanted to add a user-specific plugin somewhere that does 
something. I could create a new table with the user ID and the set of 
options for my plugin (really generic example, I know...), but then 
that's just a waste and bad performance.

Better would be to simply add a column to the WP users table, and use it 
from there.. Especially if I need access to other WP-core columns too, 
not just the ID.

However, I do believe they can be removed with a manual query in the db 
delta script, though that would kind of defeat (part of) the purpose of 
an automated DB schema updating mechanism....

One question: are these columns created in a _new_ install of WP? That 
would be something entirely different.......

-CG