Creating profiles not used for login

Authors: User:justincc

In Inventory Archives I plan to preserve item creator information. When the archive is loaded I would like to recreate these profiles where possible (grid operators can choose not to allow this and that will be the default, I expect).

Unless an item creator has an account on the OpenSim to which the archive is loaded, they shouldn't be able to login to that instance.

So far I've thought of 3 ways to achieve this

(1) Create a normal user account but set the password to something random.

PROS
 * Doesn't require any changes to what we have today

CONS
 * Creates user accounts which are never intended to be used for login
 * No way to distinguish archive created accounts from legitimate accounts

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(2) Add a 'ProfileOnly' flag to the Users table

PROS
 * Minimal changes to what we have today
 * Makes it clear that an entries has been created for its profile only, which can be used as a flag to disallow logins

CONS
 * Creates user accounts where many details will be irrelevant unless item creators then get accounts on the instance.
 * Complicates administration tasks (e.g. create user).

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(3) Separate the current 'users' table into 'userprofiles' and 'users' tables.

'userprofiles' will largely contain all the metadata about a user that you can see in the profile on the Linden Labs Second Life client today (name, about, interests, 1st life, etc.).

'users' will contain the data associated with a particular account (passwordHash, passwordSalt, homeRegion, homeLocationX, etc.)

PROS
 * Makes it possible to create user profiles without creating user accounts.
 * Makes it possible to have somewhat separate profile and authentication plugins allow mix & match. However, the reuse of avatar name as the login identifier makes things a bit awkward.
 * Simplifies database understandability - the only people in the 'users' table are those with actual accounts, though on the other hand this does create 2 tables instead of 1.

CONS
 * Short term adjustment pain for systems accessing OpenSim's databases directly
 * Complicates administration tasks (e.g. create user).

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I suspect that archiving isn't the only potential use for this functionality. For instance, the Hypergrid may also find it useful to preserve user information when a user rezzes an object on a foreign system.

Of the above approaches, I prefer (3) over (2) since it seems to me to be the better long term approach even if there is some short term pain. I'm not seriously considering (1).

Comments?