* John Rouillard <issues@roundup-tracker.org> [20200303 04:37]:
> I have to admit I have never dropped a populated element from the
> schema. Dropping the field from the schema will make it inaccessible
> via the tracker.
> 
> Do you know if removing the phone number from schema.py is sufficient
> to also delete the data? Do I have to drop the data using the database
> tools as well?
> 
> Given that I can't change the type of a property by removing it from
> the schema and adding a new property with the same name but different
> type, I suspect that the data and original property stay in the
> database and are just inaccessible.

Dropping an attribute from schema.py does not remove the data, but
makes it inaccessible. But other that you can no longer create a new
attribute with the same name and a different type, this does not
cause any problems.

Removal of the actual data can only be done via database tools
(psql, sqlite or whatever). The journal might need to be cleaned up
as well, so keeping the attribute and thus giving the users the
option to remove the data would not actually remove the data anyway,
because it will just be moved to the journal. So dropping the
attribute now would be the right thing to do. Cleanup can happen
anytime later.