[Chandler-dev] Future of redirectTo?

[Bryan Stearns]

There are a couple of things happening that are calling our 
attribute-redirection strategy into question...

- Bug 6387 (sorted index doesn't maintain sort) where we're trying to 
index a redirectTo attribute. I'm not sure what exactly is happening, 
but I can imagine: existing attribute redirection doesn't let the 
repository know when a redirect-source attribute has changed, so that it 
can update a redirect-target index.

- The dashboard spec calls for more-complex multi-attribute sorting on 
some columns; some of the sorts call for collection indexes that will 
need to consider attributes on items other than the one in the 
collection: eg, when sorting the date column, an item needs to produce 
"the next interesting datetime", which could be the startTime if it's an 
event, or the datetime of the next tickler that's going to fire (and 
while the spec only calls for one tickler per item for now, there'll be 
multiple ticklers in the future).

I don't have a solution to this (in spite of what John said in bug 
6387), but I'm writing this to start a conversation. Jeffrey had 
suggested using onValueChanged methods to keep new just-for-indexing 
attributes updated. Andi suggested using some form of bequeathTo (the 
inverse of redirectTo?), but I don't think a static declaration can 
cover the complex cases that Mimi wants.

What do you think?

...Bryan