calculated fields easy

[avas325]

Hi all,
After searching this forum was unable to fined easy way for managing calculated fileds.
So ended up with writing triggers in MySQL. Very easy, simple and hassel free.
Example

DB cat01_stock_cstm
2 fields stock and stock_comment are in the DB

CREATE TRIGGER TRIG
FOR EACH ROW ON UPDATE cat01_stock_cstm
BEGIN
IF NEW.stock_c<1 THEN
SET NEW.stock_comment_c='few';
ELSEIF NEW.stock_c>=5 THEN
SET NEW.stock_comment_c='plenty';
ELSE SET NEW.stock_comment_c='not in stock';
END IF;
END

Works superfast and updates only the updated record
Am I missing something? or the whole point with adding php code is just to keep less data in the DB?
seems easy and upgrade stable

[rafael.q.g@hotmail.com]

It is a very good approch for computed fields.
But my personal opnion is whether some information is really computed it don't have to be store it on database, it has to be calculated on runtime. Because sometimes the field contents is based on external infos that could be changed after trigger execution, and then when you read this information back it could be obsolete.

Sugar provides a simple way to do that using fields managed by a PHP function, and this function receives automatically an object named $bean which already has all attributes filled supporting an easy computation of new fields.