Store parameters of various types I am a (poor, young) scientist working to develop a database to allow a project to scale up. I am experimenting with MySQL and have had very encouraging experiences so far, but I am still novice and am coming at this from perhaps an unusual perspective.

Below is a diagram of the relevant parts of my schema, as I have it modelled right now. The fields are essentially place holders at this point, but in general I would like to leave room for documentation of just about every unique element in the database (except probably not for jobs, but I digress). There are a couple of qualities that I am shooting for:


Valid parameters are algorithm dependent, and we may add new algorithms at any time. I'd like to be able to register a new algorithm, and associate it with particular parameters.
Because new algorithms may require new parameters, I should be able to register new parameters as well.
A particular experiment will use one algorithm. Jobs are unique parametrizations of an experiment/algorithm. Through the relation of an experiment and an algorithm, I can validate the parameters submitted along with a particular job.


My point of confusion, given this schema, is how to store the values of the parameters for a particular job. Right now, as a place holder, I have a values column in the table job_has_parameter, but this is not going to work. Some parameters are integers, others doubles, still others character strings. Some algorithms may even take lists as parameters... but I'm willing to punt on that for now. At any rate, a single value column is not going to work.

Does this schema make sense at all? If it does make sense, generally speaking, what would be a reasonable way to handle storing the parameter values? I welcome criticism; I am under no delusion that I am on the right track here, but it's an effort.





Edit: I think that this schema is inadvertently adopting an entity-attribute-value style. I read that this is a bad thing. https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/avoiding-the-eav-of-destruction/ Perhaps someone can help set me on a better path?
How about adding an extra column in you Job_Has_Parameter table? 

Add a column called DataType and store what type of value the text contains. 

When it comes to using the value, you might have to use the combination of case statement and cast/convert function.

You can take it to next step and add a table called datatype and make a foreign with this new column.