There is an ongoing debate on this subject at Lambda the Ultimate. One
approach that is sound is to introduce a new static type, called
DYNAMIC, that permits any value. Summarizing and seconding Dennis
Cote's suggestion, perhaps columns that have no type declared, or that
are declared DYNAMIC, behave as SQLite does today, and columns that
have static declarations behave as if they are statically typed.
I like that suggestion, but I am sure that this is beyond the scope of the
question.
Truth be told, manifest typing has never been a selling point (if I can
use that term for free software) for me, rather it has been something to be
aware of / work around. I know at one point there was talk of a strict
affinity mode for sqlite (at least I saw something that indicated that
somewhere on the website: http://www.sqlite.org/datatype3.html bullet point
6.) I personally would love to see a strict affinity mode db with the
inclusion of a dynamically typed column that can still be used.
BTW: a dynamically typed column is actually included in MSSQL 2005.
ALso is there a "roadmap" type document that talks about the future of
sqlite?
--Preston
