[ZODB-Dev] RFC: deprecate transaction user and description fields in favor of extened info and simplify extended info API

[Jim Fulton]

The user and description fields are somewhat archaic. They can only be
strings (not unicode) and can as easily be handled as extended info.

I propose to deprecate the 'user' and 'description' attributes, and
the 'setUser' and 'note' methods and to add a new 'info' attribute
whose attributes can be set to set extended info.  For example:

   transaction.info.user = u'j1m'

I propose to do this in 3 phases (version numbers are guesses :):

- In transaction 2.0, implement 'info' and reimplement 'user',
  'description', 'note' and 'setUser' in terms of 'info'.

- In transaction 2.1, add deprecation warnings for 'user',
  'description', 'note' and 'setUser'.

- In some future version of ZODB, stop storing user and description
  fields.

Comments?

Jim

--
Jim Fulton