Today we deployed a major revision of OSQA which unifies the way questions, answers and comments are represented in the back-end database. Previously these entities were stored in separate, but similar, database tables. Now they are all stored together in a single table with a common structure.
With the new, unified version we can search more quickly and reliably, and we can manage revisions more consistently. It also makes new features possible like “promote an answer into a question” since sometimes people have been known to answer questions with questions! Another useful case will probably “convert an answer into a comment” for posts that really don’t qualify as answers, per se.
Anyone upgrading an existing OSQA site will need to perform some data migration steps. We have included migration scrips for South which will should make this relatively simple, but PLEASE backup your database before starting!
