Re: The..Horror.....The..Horror.

I think you have basically described a CODACYL style network database (halfway between hierarchical and relational.)

Basically, you have multiple parents with RI pointing to the children. What you described is creating parents without children, then adding child pointers later when the children are created. Not the most logical or efficient, at least as described, but if it has been around for a while, it is apparently effective.

In article <f_zm2.88$D5.639_at_nnrp1.ptd.net>,   "Stephen Tenberg" <STenberg_at_fcs-usa.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure exactly what you are saying, but I am not sure from your
> description it is a horror.
>
> Actually, I think traditional referential integrity constraints are a
> horror, as in, when you try to change the value of the parent key fields,
> billions of children need to change too, which is difficult to do.
>
> Consequently, many folks use an 'object identifier' (a sequence number) that
> parents and children can use to establish referential integrity, instead of
> a real column, and if implemented correctly, that is a good solution.
>
> Steve
>
> Joe & Anne Buhl wrote in message <369AC877.568BEC27_at_worldnet.att.net>...
> >Hello,
> >
> >I just took a new position at a small company. I was not to disturbed
> >to find out that they do not utilize referential integrity constraints.
> >But to my horror, I found out today that they actually create child
> >records with which there is no parent. Sequence numbers are used
> >exclusively. They create the foriegn key as a sequence number then when
> >they need attributes from the parent they create the parent record.
> >
> >This violates one of Codds original principals of the relational model.
> >I don't have any experience with this type of activity. I don't know
> >what kind of problems it causes other than having a bunch of orphan
> >records in the table. It seems to me that it is no longer a relational
> >database but a database dump.
> >
> >Can any of you give me some real world examples of the problems this can
> >cause.
> >
> >Please copy me at jbuhl_at_commerce.com for your responses.
> >
> >Thanks
> >
> >joe
> >
>
>

Joseph R.P. Maloney, CCP,CSP,CDP
MPiR, Inc.
502-451-7404
some witty phrase goes here, I think.

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