[Tickets #7303] Re: Changing category's name

[bugs at horde.org]

DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. THIS EMAIL ADDRESS IS NOT MONITORED.

Ticket URL: http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/7303
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Ticket             | 7303
  Updated By         | akerbos at freenet.de
  Summary            | Changing category's name
  Queue              | Horde Groupware Webmail Edition
  Version            | 1.1.2
  Type               | Enhancement
  State              | New
  Priority           | 1. Low
  Milestone          |
  Patch              |
  Owners             |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


akerbos at freenet.de (2008-09-08 07:15) wrote:

Currently, there is no feature that allows renaming a category. The  
only way to do a rename is creating a new category, edit every item  
you want to have the "new" category and delete the old one afterwards.
/* Of course, I used an SQL-Query to do this, but not everyone does  
have admin access to the database Horde is using. */

I think this reflects a design that is imho very poor: Categories seem  
not to be referenced with an (guaranteed) unique identifier but with  
their name. If you delete a category, existing items are not changed  
but are identified as dirty at runtime. In other words, you leave  
inconsistent data.

The problem I mentioned can be solved even with this design: If a  
category's name is changed (provided there is no conflict), identify  
all references and change the value (one query on the item table of  
each application using categories).

I couldn't even find out where categories are stored in the database  
currently. I would prefer a separate, application independent table  
for them, containing ID, name and color (maybe a delete flag if you  
want to preserve current behaviour on delete. Would prefer solution  
using SQL that sets references to default value on delete). Then,  
renaming a category can be done in constant time.

/* Additionally, one may think about features such as  
merging/splitting categories or category hierarchy. Those might come  
in handy. */