I'm not really concerned about data right now, just structure. I'll be setting default values for any new columns I might add, but I need everyone to have the same table definitions. Here's how this is currently done:

1. Examine table structure to determine which version they have
2. Run different queries depending on the version

What I want to do is store the table format within the install script, which would then examine the database and run the appropriate query, whether it's a DROP or ALTER or CREATE query. In the course of thinking about this, my theoretical structure looks something like this:

my %tables = ('table1' => (
    'column1' => 'column definition',
    'column2' => 'column definition')
);
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with a separate hash for keys and storage engine types.