Implications of changing a custom attribute type from long t

Hi, I've added a custom attribute to a work item type in the process
configuration using the GUI. I set it to be of type 'long' and now I'd
like to go back and change it to 'string'. There is already a small
amount of work items in the Jazz repository with a 'long' value. The
process configuration GUI won't let me change the type to 'string' but
then there's always the option of going in and change the process
configuration source.

What are the implications of changing this? Since all longs can be
represented as strings is there really an issue here?

Any further advice appreciated.

Integer and String attribute custom attribute values are stored
differently in the repository, so the manual type change would lead to
empty values for your existing work items.

While Longs can be
represented as Strings, there is a fundamental difference in terms of
querying them. E.g. we support 'greater than' for numbers, but not for
strings.

But a controlled way to migrate the type of an attribute could make
sense and is worth an enhancement request IMO.