ALTER TABLE table

ADD field PLUGIN("crypt","1","somecrypto","size=255") NOT NULL DEFAULT 'something'

internally (to storage engine) this kind of data will be saved as blob (for example), and to client side it will be a blob too

when i use:

insert into table(field) values ("some text");

and

select * from table

i will get "some text"

but internally (at filesystem) the value is save as a crypto of "some text"

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other idea is compress

internally it will be saved as varchar(255), when i execute insert it will compress the value and when i select it will uncompress the value

the parameters for this new field type is:

PLUGIN(plugin name, plugin version, plugin field name, parameters)

plugin name is the plugin name...

plugin version is important to execute alter table, or when using diferent kind of plugin versions we could know what version is being used and execute a automatic alter table for example...

plugin field is the type of field in this plugin

parameters are parameters for plugin values

another idea is a enum with external table...

ADD field PLUGIN("external_enum",'1','enum','table=database.table,id=field_id,value=field_value')

it will execute a SELECT internally to table "database.table" and return the id/value of that table

id is a bigint/int/mediumint/smallint/tinyint value (like enum index)

and value is a string value (varchar,char,longtext,text)

to storage engine will be used a bigint, for user it will be used as a enum() field

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thre's more examples with interesting things, like expand opengis, or add others kind of field types, but the main idea is create a plugin interface for field types

what you say guys?

bye =)

Roberto Spadim