Re: foreign vs primary key

From: Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra <leandrod_at_mac.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 18:35:08 -0300
Message-ID: <3BAA610C.1080604@mac.com>

Ewald Börger wrote:

> mikeg wrote:
>

>>identify the foreign key?  How are they used?   Aren't primary keys enough?

>
> Normally: yes, up till yesterday I never bothered (mysql doesn't even
> have support for it)... now I'm going to have an application *guess*
> what columns contain foreign keys 'cause the production database (SQL
> Server) I need to transfer doesn't have explicit foreign keys defined
> (even worse: columns don't even have consequent names :(

        Don't mess two issues. Your SQL Server database may be ill designed, but FKs are essential. Each FK you fail to declare is either a potential integrity danger to your database, or (and) lots of procedural, hard-to-optimize code you have to keep at the application layer.

        MySQL isn't a proper SQL -- not even a proper DBMS, much less RDBMS.

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Received on Thu Sep 20 2001 - 16:35:08 CDT