[ic] RE. Not able to add new items

[stjohn]

 RE. Jonathans post regarding NOT NULL db fields.

 Thanks for the post, had a quick shot at sorting it out but still no joy.
First off I had a look at the database structure, like you suggested
(<catroot>/dbconf/mysql/products.mysql).  Now there are a few things here
that I don't quite understand, although I might be wrong with this.

 Certain fields state that they should not have null values, however the
default value that is specified is clearly NULL i.e. category=VARCHAR(64)
NOT NULL DEFAULT ''.  Now I really don't understand this - but I went on as
you suggested.  I went to the New Item section and started to add in a new
item, ensuring that I filled in all the fields which required values.  My
first problem was this, the db structure for products starts withRE.
Jonathans post regarding NOT NULL db fields.

Thanks for the post, had a quick shot at sorting it out but still no joy.
First off I had a look at the database structure, like you suggested
(<catroot>/dbconf/mysql/products.mysql).  Now there are a few things here
that I don't quite understand, although I might be wrong with this.

Certain fields state that they should not have null values, however the
default value that is specified is clearly NULL i.e. category=VARCHAR(64)
NOT NULL DEFAULT ''.  Now I really don't understand this - but I went on as
you suggested.  I went to the New Item section and started to add in a new
item, ensuring that I filled in all the fields which required values.  My
first problem was this, the db structure for products starts with:

Database products KEY sku
Database products COLUMN_DEF "sku=char(64) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY"
Database products COLUMN_DEF "description=VARCHAR(128) NOT NULL"
Database products COLUMN_DEF "title=VARCHAR(128) DEFAULT '' NOT NULL"
Database products INDEX title
Database products COLUMN_DEF "template_page=VARCHAR(64)"

- now when I go to New Item, I don't have any 'title' field displayed - thus
no way of entering a value for this (Problem no.1).

So not wanting to be put of I went to the table section of admin and
displayed the products table as a spreadsheet - now I see the 'title' field
as well as all the others that weren't displayed - however now I have a
whole host of other fields that don't seem to be defined in the products
table i.e. tax_category,dl_type, dl_location.  Now I don't know what these
fields are or what they relate to, or for that matter, what value, if any
they need.  Are these values defined in another table?  Why is the 'title'
field not displayed on the New Item page, if it has to hold a value? And
how, please, please can I get some products back into my system.  Could the
structure of my sql database be corrupted some how as a result of the
upgrade.

Sorry about the length of post, thanks in advance,

Mike C