In some other systems which had to deal with dynamic data, all information has been stored in one "value" column of type text. Wouldn't this be the better solution and have the TCL API make sure that one valid values get stored in the column?
Rephrased: Is there a compelling need for the database to make sure of integrity, thereby adding additional columns to the table and confusing things, instead of having the API make sure that only items that have been checked for validity (pending on the item_type as Stan pointed out) are stored.
