We have several old attributes which have been deprecated and removed from our work items. We know the old attributes remain in work items found in the repository. I don’t mind old attributes existing, but in the Eclipse client, in the Work Items view, there is a view menu (the little white down arrow). Inside the view menu, in the Columns submenu, there is a list of all the attributes which you can display. I would like this list to not show the old, removed attributes.

I found that the database contains a table called “com.ibm.team.workitem.attribute” which seems to contain a complete list of all attributes which have ever existed. Using information from this table, I identified all of the attributes which are no longer in use and “wrote” them down.

I then looked for work items (using the LIVE_WORKITEM_CNT table) in the database which had a key matching the old attribute id. In this way, I have identified the work items which contain the old attributes I would like to remove.

I was wholly expecting deleting these work items to remove the attribute name from the list; however the columns menu in the view menu of the Work Items view still displays the old attribute names.

All that said here is my question for the expert: Where does the list come from which populates that menu (Columns menu under the view menu of the Work Items view)? And if I were to able edit the said table, what other tables would need to be edited (and how) in order to not break everything?

Thanks!