In admin/pages/users I see 14 files related to user (not counting internal_setPermissions as it may not exist for other tables, not sure.)
Then in queries/admin there are 8 more files for users.
Then in queries/user there are 4 more user related files
Then templates/default/php there are 2 more user specific files
And what are you going to do? Load query strings you're not even going to execute? How would you implement multi-engine support exactly? You going to hard-code every blasted possible combination for posgre, mssql, oracle, etc, etc into your code with if statements?
Much less the templating. Your example for squire hardcoded all the presentation with NO option for skinning/multi-template! How is that "functionally identical" and do you not see the advantages of separation of concerns?!?
Of course you dread it. If you didnt have such a complicated architecture it would no problem to do anything with the database.
re: restructuring tablesThat's not the part I dread. I suck at writing "ALTER" statements in SQL. Like... suck out loud at it. Another place where it doesn't help the official documentation for things like MariaDB / MySQL are utter trash sending you diving for third party tutorials that ... are often as lacking in clarity or even just plain English.
My ineptitude at writing ALTER alongside my disdain for JOIN are probably my two weakest points in query writing. I freely admit that.
The code to detect changes and call the query? That's simple (for me). It's writing those specific ALTER queries that always gets me flummoxed.
Also doesn't help that FIRST I need to implement a settings table so installed versions can be tracked, as well as an "administrator mode" toggle to shut down normal user access during the upgrade process. Things that should be in place LONG before you even start dicking with adding new tables and restructuring old ones, much less uploading changes to a live install.
But then I prefer to build groundwork BEFORE I put the functionality atop it. Everyone else these days seems to go the opposite direction.
