Your explanation is great. I like the key frame codec analogy. Like you said though, this really belongs at the DB layer. An application level solution would be

Your explanation is great. I like the key frame codec analogy. Like you said though, this really belongs at the DB layer. An application level solution would be much more than a nightmare. Plugin/extension/module development is severely underused in our field. Extensibility, if possible, is often the best way to handle edge cases or increments in a dependency, without forking it. See "Benefits of Being an Extension to PostgreSQL": https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2017/10/25/what-it-means-to-be-a-postgresql-extension/ https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2017/10/25/what-it-means-to-b... Some great software that is extensible in brilliant ways through plugins, that comes to mind, is: postgres: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/external-extensions.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/external-extensions.... nginx: https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/modules/ https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/modules/ sqlite: https://www.sqlite.org/loadext.html https://www.sqlite.org/loadext.html redis: https://redis.io/docs/modules/ https://redis.io/docs/modules/ babel: https://babeljs.io/docs/en/plugins/ https://babeljs.io/docs/en/plugins/