I've decided to start a blog to talk about some ideas that I've been mulling over for several years. There are several software patterns and information that I hope others will find helpful.

One pattern that I want to discuss is the pattern of adding arbitrary fields to applications, often called user defined fields, user defined attributes, custom fields, or flex fields. There are many different purposes and applications for user defined fields, and I'll discuss those. There are also many different ways to implement user defined fields with pros and cons to each, so I'll go over that.

Later, I'll talk about architectural patterns that can be used to support the user defined field pattern. I've used these architectures in the past and want to explain how they support the different requirements and implementations of user defined fields.

This is where I'll start and I'll take it from there. Hope you can find value in the information presented here.