Hi everybody.
I have an idiotic question. Does anybody know how some applications allow the end user to dynamically design the web forms and add additional attributes to the application database by adding new fields to the form?
Examples are IBM Tivoli Service Request Manager and Manageengine Service Desk Plus.
Here is flash demo showing that feature.
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/tivoli/demos/service-request-mgr/SRM_Features.exe
There's no magic to this, its just a matter of dynamically updating web form fields while issuing database commands to add the appropriate fields in the db.
I recently went to a great talk on "Document Databases" at a local geek event. Very interesting stuff, since data is serialised key/value pairs (key being the "ID", value being any Object), you can do pretty much what you like. Obviously, you would still need to account for "what if data (schema) changes after records have been created" - but the ability to be dynamic out of the box might come in handy.
If you have the opportunity to integrate this kind of thing, then it may be worth considering like that. If not, then it is as Harley Green said, you need to do the hard work and execute the DB commands to update etc. yourself.
Some examples of Document DB's:
It should be noted, I have not used either in production.