The Future of Fields

SESSION OVERVIEW

In February 2008 six Drupal developers held a Design Sprint in which we attempted to clarify Drupal’s future needs regarding data access, storage, and handling in a web-services world and how the much-desired goal of “CCK fields in core” can be implemented as a step in the right direction. In this session we will present our ideas and discuss them with the community.

AGENDA

As we write this proposal, many things are still unclear and unresolved, though we hope to reach a sensible consensus soon. Some of the topics we intend to cover are:

• What it means to have “fields in core” and what the fields API looks like
• How to migrate existing content modules to the fields paradigm
• How Drupal nodes can seamlessly integrate external data
  • e.g. a node view that includes both local data fields and information from a web service
• How Drupal modules can seamlessly enhance external data
  • e.g. a Drupal comment or fivestar vote on a Flickr photo that is not imported as a node
• Our proposed roadmap for implementing this functionality in Drupal 7

GOALS

Our goal is to receive feedback on our plans from the community and gain momentum and volunteers for our implementation effort.

RESOURCES

Attendees should have read the daily notes and other posts in the Data Architecture Design Sprint group ahead of time so they come prepared with questions and feedback about our proposals.