[wp-hackers] 2.4 Feature Proposal: New general meta-data table

[Austin Matzko]

For WordPress 2.4, I propose that we add a general meta-data table.
It would be similar in structure to the current postmeta and usermeta
tables, except with an additional field specifying the domain of the
meta-data.

There are at least a couple of benefits to such a table:

- We could have meta-data for comments and categories.
Others have proposed meta tables for the comments [1]; rather than
adding meta tables seriatim, a general meta-data table would meet that
need and offer the possibility of actually reducing the total number
of tables.

- It would provide a better place for plugins to store data.
Currently, most plugins---when they don't have enough data to justify
creating their own table---store data in the options table.  I think
there are disadvantages to bloating the options table, one of which is
that WP loads almost all options into the object cache.

Thoughts?

[1] http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2659