Deprecated - Drupal core

i've often found that i'd like to store some small details for my module in the database somewhere, but it's stuff that's not worth creating a whole new table for. i think the only place that this data can go now is in the variable table, and in my opinion there are many entries in that table that really don't need to be loaded into $conf all the time--it seems like a waste of resources.

irc discussion with a few other devs has gotten my thoughts to this point on the topic:

another place to put these kinds of 'occasionally used' variables would have the following benefits

• less bloat in the $conf array, meaning less memory usage
• more definition between vars that need to be loaded w/ every page request, and those that only need to be accessed occasionally
• a nice spot for module devs to put small pieces of useful information (ex. a timestamp that records the last time operation X was done)

downsides:

• more code
• more in the db
• more decisions for a module developer

the downsides seem almost none to me--i just threw them in for balance... :)

i can see this being implemented in one of two ways:

1. a new table, 'storage', which has the same basic structure as variable--only difference being that the stuff in there isn't loaded all the time. also two helper functions that mimic what variable_get and variable_set do
   

Or do function calls already exist to do this? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've checked the API docs and didn't see anything that looked like a "standard" method of retrieving and updating user data.

I've seen a few modules/scenarios where this is already an issue -- either they're storing redundant user data in a new table or they're SELECTing right from the user table, which is fine and dandy, except when you're using LDAP, or trying to integrate a third-party component (PHPBB comes to mind).

Assume someone is offering users the ability to have their own drupal sites, and there is the possiblity of having hundreds of sites on ones server. You offer a site so they have control over it - admin privileges. This is more for organizations. The issue is that you don't want hundreds of tables, and or databases to maintain.

Greetings,

last night i had a big problem (I presume) with my hosting service cause it goes into a "Too many connections" for mysql when i was trying to post a blog message: now my blog is still online but I can not post anymore any kind of content: the message i receive is that there's a duplicate entry for blog in key "2".

I know this has come up, because I've seen it, but couldn't find the thread, so I apologize for that. I also know that 4.7 is going into code freeze, so that's why I mention this RE Drupal 4.8 or possibly 5.0 given the nature of the changes.

I've tried at least 10 CMS in my search and never found something that let me do what I want to do until Drupal. It has some missing features that I want, but this is what I *like* about Drupal. By default it's not full of every stupid feature that some guy like me wants. That rocks.

This is like my wife's "I love you, but..." preamble before I get told how to shape up ;-)

Anyway, one thing that I would like to see for the future, is better compartmentalization of the presentation layer into the themes themselves. A couple of examples:

- breadcrumbs. The HTML for this is output by theme.inc and is not theme-configurable. I might want, for example, my breadcrumbs to be output as a list with the list style "inline" That would make good sense semantically and allow all sorts of presentation tricks with CSS. Or even simpler, I might want a raquo separator for one theme, but for another I might want to use a background image like Gallery does. This should be up to the theme author, not the theme engine or the core.

- primary/secondary links. I feel like PHPTemplate is halfway there - grab the the link, anchor text and title as separate fields in form, serialize, store, retrieve, unserialize. But ideally, it would put the info into an array and return just the array, with all the HTML styling being done within the theme itself. Of course, I have all the power of PHPTemplate, so I can (and probably will) do that with my template, I'm just saying that architecturally I think it would be preferable to have the HTML output as part of the theme, rather than the theme engine, while theme authors should never be making DB requests, even if PHPTemplate allows it.

I've installed drupal and I added catagories to my site but when I log in under ***site/user and I log into my site as admin or my second user name, I don't see the navigation on the side. It doesn't go to the administration end of drupal, it shows a user interface.

What happend. Previously when I logged in, it would go the the administration area.

Thanks for you help.