Coding advise about adding to a db column?

[Mr Blunt]

I seek advise from anyone willing to give it.

I've been supporting a hack to track who downloaded each file for a long time and I recently ported it to vb350 no sweat. The hack simply writes a comma & the attachmentid# to a new db text column called "DOWNLOADS" in the table "USER".


I want to advance the hack to the next level.
I want to now add the dateline, ip, and alt_ip with each downloaded file.
But I don't know if any other HACKS use this column.


I'm done with all the code and it works peachy.
I only use the same old DOWNLOADS column.
It appends a colon inbetween each new datastring.


So here's an old sample from the database:

4,20,18

Here's a new sample (ip's fudged obviously):

4:1121263806:88.88.88.88:88.88.88.88,20:1121263837:88.88.88.88:88.88.88.88,18:1121263946:88.88.88.88:88.88.88.88

(edited to say vbulletin is adding that space, not me, meaning my db entry/read doesn't have spaces so act like the string is whole please)


So my question is three-fold
1) Is it normal for a coder to make a huge db change like this?
2) Does the idea of me doing this piss anyone off?
3) Are there any other hacks that use a column named as mine which I obviously wouldn't want to conflict with?


The last thing I want to do is make anyone mad so I'm asking before I release this revamped version.

I will say that I made it so it can still read the "old data type".
So what "was once tracked" will still be "readable".

But obviously this doesn't mean other hacks would understand my "new data type".