RE: Limits on referential integrity

From: Craig Munday <Craig.Munday_at_ecard.com.au>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 15:11:09 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.003F67E3.20020121150027@fatcity.com>

Jared and Dennis,

In the J2EE world I've found that developers can have a little trouble with RI because in some cases it is not the developer that is performing the DML operations - the J2EE container does this for them when using Container Managed Persistence (CMP). Some CMP implementations do not understand RI yet, and this is especially true when multiple containers are used in the middle tier - that is, there is no/little coordination between the containers to issue the DML in the correct order.

Cheers,
Craig.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jared.Still_at_radisys.com [mailto:Jared.Still_at_radisys.com] Sent: Tuesday, 22 January 2002 9:16 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: Re: Limits on referential integrity

I would be you lunch that what they are implementing in their code is not actually RI. They may be implementing code to ensure things get inserted in the right order, and that child rows have a parent.

This is a very weak form of RI. Oracle is very good at implementing RI, and it is not dependent on an application. RI in the database is the route to choose unless there is some good reason not to.

RI in the database will prevent orphaned data created through updates, deletes or even ( gasp! ) bugs in the app.

Programmers tend to dislike RI in the database because it forces them to maintain data integrity in a transaction. This is not a bad thing, it just forces them to have a good understanding of their transactions.

Point out to them that it is less code to write as well. :)

Jared

DENNIS WILLIAMS <DWILLIAMS_at_LIFETOUCH.COM> Sent by: root_at_fatcity.com
01/21/02 01:35 PM
Please respond to ORACLE-L

 
        To:     Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
        cc: 
        Subject:        Limits on referential integrity

How much referential integrity should be implemented in Oracle? We are starting a large new Java project. Our current applications keep their referential integrity inside their own dictionary, so I haven't had to deal
much with referential integrity recently. Can there be too much of a good thing? What guidelines do you tend to use? At this point the developers are
designing the data model so they are busily linking all the little boxes. My
attitude at this point is "implement what you've got and if there are performance problems we'll deal with them when they arise". Can anyone give
me a better motto?
Thanks.
Dennis Williams
DBA
Lifetouch, Inc.
dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com

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Author: DENNIS WILLIAMS
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