How bad is to ALTER tables from an upgrade point of view ?

[mihai11]

Hi,

What is preferable ? To ALTER an existing VB table in order to add more fields or to create a completely new table that will keep your plug-in deconnected from future Vbulletin database changes ?

For example, I need to add some additional information to the user table. What should I do ? ALTER the existing table or create a new table ?

Regards,
Razvan

[psalzmann]

I would say yes it's best to avoid altering any stock tables however it is possible. Why not just have your addon or product use a seperate table? this way you can easily upgrade it without the loss of any stock table in vb...

[Farcaster]

It really depends on what you're trying to do. If you want to add a field to the user table, for instance, that will then be made available on posts and in the user arrays, then adding the column to the user table will prevent you from having to do manual edits to add table joins. If, on the other hand, the field will be accessed infrequently, you may want to consider adding a separate child table.