Recursive relationship

From: Louis Avrami <avramil_at_concentric.net>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 11:07:56 -0700
Message-Id: <10534.109883@fatcity.com>

Hi all,

I was looking at one of the development databases here at my shop and came across the following constraint on a table:

REM Generating create SQL for: CIRQIT.ITEM foreign constraint:   SYS_C009488
ALTER TABLE ITEM ADD CONSTRAINT SYS_C009488 FOREIGN KEY (

       ITEM_NBR                           ,
       VERSION_NBR                        )
 REFERENCES CIRQIT.ITEM (
       ITEM_NBR                           ,
       VERSION_NBR                        ) ;

I was a little surprised that Oracle (8.1.6.0.0) even allowed for a self-referencing foreign key constraint to be created.

Can anyone out there give a "formal" explanation or references as to why such a recursive relationship is not good? I've used the terms "recursive relationship" and "keys referring back to themselves", etc. etc.

Thanks

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