The suggestion in MDL-8785 to augment it with a boolean flag still sounds good to me (see MDL-8789 ). A cron job could quickly update the flag on a regular basis:

UPDATE role_assignments SET current = (timestart < $now AND (timeend >= $now OR timeend=0 ) )

Would have to be 2.0 though, as it would mean a new field.

Where is the interface to support timestart that you refer to?

(There is also a dropdown 'Enrolment duration' which uses timeend so presumably works.)

If there are performance problems with inequalities in general in some databases (rather than just when they're part of very complex queries which is what I had assumed) then I agree that your solution to update on cron is better.

There are also a few other issues in this area to do with how this is displayed. For example it might be nice if users who are 'not current' were shown greyed-out in the interface, etc. So maybe it is a bigger task...

[I guess we can live without timestart working as long as we're careful not to set the 'visible to students' flag on courses until they go live, so I think we'll do that locally for now.]

I will do a patch shortly for 2.0 to add the database field 'current' , the cron query to check timestart and update current, and the check of 'current' in the same queries that were affected in my original patch.

(Don't forget to remove the timestart/timeend rounding code mentioned in MDL-8785)

Now (tomorrow) to merge to HEAD.

This patch applies to HEAD. Now I just need to review it and check it in.

I suppose people want to limit access to course depending on some dates/conditions, but they want to see them in gradebook at ALL times (if you remove role==unenrol users/grades disappear!, subscriptions are lost, group membership is gone). This is not about removing roles, this is about restricting of access to course imo.

The time bases roles could be used for example to specify a date range when students may add glossary entries, you would crate a separate role without course:view assigned at module level only. If this gets implemented with current role based enrolments I would vote loudly to allow timestart/end only for roles without the course:view capability enabled (those can not be used for enrolment).

What I really want is the separation of course enrolment from role assignments, multiple enrolment plugins of the same type in one course, elimination of the negative legacy guest capability (if you get it somehow, there is no way to get rid of it), global group enrolment, etc. Improved performance would be just a nice by product.

Please could we redesign the enrollment framework first, I am sure several current long standing problems would disappear.

However, that is not a good reason for ignoring this bug. We have current UI for setting up timed enrolments, and we have all this data in the databse, and then accesslib just ignores it. That is a bug. Bugs should be fixed, and all the hard work on this is nearly finished.

When you come to rethink enrolments, then surely it is easier to start from a place with fewer bugs, rather than starting from a baseline where things work inconsistently.

Whenever I do manage to get a good discussion going about something I am working on, I am always surprised at how many good ideas I get, even when I already think I know all the answers.

1. Confirming we don't need any code in backup/restore, because restore uses the role_assign function, which initialises the active field properly.

2. admin/generator.php was touching the role_assignments table directly, rather than using role_assign(). Fixed in a separate commit.

3. There are some refererences to the role_assignments table outside accesslib.php, which sam missed. I'm fixing those queries that need it. Wow! there were a lot.

4. upgrade.php code redone to use 2.0 XMLDB functions.

5. We are not creating an index on the role_assignements.active field. That seems OK to me.