phpMyAdmin can provide a detailed look at the current table definition (if you have the needed permissions).
'each_req' - individual requests - the most important table.
Dates are recorded as seconds since the (Unix) epoch. Times are recorded as seconds. Most fields are free form "varchar(255)". A few have become "text", as "varchar(255)" isn't big enough (e.g. for "dependencies" and "see_also"). There are fewer constraints on the input data than one might imagine.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| serial_num | primary key |
| queue_id | |
| keywords | |
| theme | supports dynamic fields, with values of the form /$pseudo_field/$value |
| service | a client oriented characterization of the work. Valid values of the "service" field. |
| component | a technically oriented characterization of the work. Valid values of the "component" field. |
| advancement | Valid values of the "advancement" field. |
| requestors | the userid(s) of the people asking for the work to be done. |
| owner | |
| subject | a one line description of the action to be take. |
| priority | |
| timing | one of "reactive" or "proactive". |
| status | |
| time_worked | |
| date_created | |
| date_told | date the requestor was last notified. Set by &reply_MFCF, ¬ify, &import_correspondence, &merge and by request creation, which sets it to 0. |
| date_acted | |
| date_due | |
| date_worked | |
| id_other | |
| sponsors | |
| date_assigned | |
| date_done | |
| assigned_by | |
| audited_by | |
| package | names the software package involved; originally intended for Xhier package names. |
| software | application name |
| dependencies | This also recorded in the "refers_to" table, for faster searching. So this may eventually go away. |
| see_also | This also recorded in the "refers_to" table, for faster searching. So this may eventually go away. |
| merged | serial number of the request that this request was merged with. |
| file | a pathname of a file (or directory) containing information related to this request. Should check to see if this is still used. |
| The next 5 fields should be moved to an equipment table. | |
| equip_type | standardized types |
| equip_other | other equip_type |
| equip_name | |
| equip_barcode | |
| location | problem location e.g. room number |
| cc | |
| private | |
| urgency | See note below |
| account_number | |
| signing_authority | |
| offExt | office extension, same length as users.phone |
| offLoc | office location, same length as client_users.offLoc |
| department | values are mostly obvious. Sadly, it uses "" to mean the Faculty of Math. |
| subscription_code | |
| cost_estimate | We already see costs like: $11K -> $23K so it's perhaps a lost cause to impose more structure than a comma separated list, with an item containing a '$' being money rather than time. |
| responsible | |
| area | |
| alias | |
| effective_sn | unused, in favour of the "merged" field |
| final_priority | |
| initial_priority | |
| notification | ToDo.Notification. |
| submitted_for | deprecated, but some records still use it |
| tentative_who | ToDo.TentativeWho. |
The ToDo fields are used by the "gripe" importer (`rt-import-todo`).
| ST | ToDo |
|---|---|
| subject | Subject |
| effective_sn | Id |
| requestors | From |
| ? | Date |
| ? | Date-Created |
| priority | Priority |
| owner | Who |
| time_worked | Time |
Urgency. This may well change!
The old meanings (descriptions in the hardware-request form) were:
I think that the separation of "24 hour" and Urgent is because some users were reluctant to declare an emergency, but 24 hours was inadequate. Note that the new meanings mostly seem to encode the desired "response" time, which could overlap too much with date_due. It would be nice to have something like "importance" or "impact" with choices like: