So, you start out with a rails app, and you''ve got a database and models. And when you use a model object, it infers a bunch of stuff from the database. But then your database needs to change, so you write a migration to manage that. But now you''re not really inferring structure from the database, you''re getting it from the migration, and the database is the intermediary. Doesn''t it make sense then to integrate the migrations into the model directly? Is there some reason why this wasn''t done? Among other things, if they were, you could have conditional code in the model that depended on particular migration versions - things like "if you''re on version N of the schema which includes a price field, then add methods to compute the tax" or some such. So, if you have a migration, it''s used, and if not, then it falls back to inferring from the db structure the same way it works now. -- - Adam ** Expert Technical Project and Business Management **** System Performance Analysis and Architecture ****** [ http://www.adamfields.com ] [ http://www.aquick.org/blog ] ............ Blog [ http://www.adamfields.com/resume.html ].. Experience [ http://www.flickr.com/photos/fields ] ... Photos [ http://www.aquicki.com/wiki ].............Wiki