Have a serialized column to store product settings/data

Hi everyone,

I was thinking, I have made a few extensions that all my customers to add extra fields or data to a particular product. Each one of those extensions require some database changes. For example, my Product Video Suite:

Users must run the install script to create an extra table called oc_product_video

When saving that product the VQMod file adds a little code which adds the video URLs to that table.

I think it would be good if there was an extra field in the product table called "product_data" which contains serialized data, in the same way module settings, and store settings are stored.

It would be cleaner that way because the database structure doesn't need to be be tampered with and it can also keep code to a minimum when saving product data.

What do you all think?

Peter

Nice idea, but serialized data hard to do find / search operation, maybe consider to using some EAV table, like magento does

the problem if you have a data column is that all extensions would be using it. And before they update to it, they will have to fetch the correct data and serialize it, along with their data. It's going to be a mess, with even more extension conflicts.