Re: foreign vs primary key

From: Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra <leandrod_at_mac.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 20:09:35 -0300
Message-ID: <3BAA772F.70004@mac.com>

Ewald Börger wrote:

> Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra wrote:
>

>>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

[...]

>> Don't mess two issues. Your SQL Server database may be ill designed, but FKs [...]

> That actually *was* my point, meant to say it in a way like "if you
> never needed it, you wouldn't think it very important" :-)

        Sorry for misunderstanding, the issue was that you actually said that primary keys were enough, and that's not true.

        I see you may have tried to state the opposite to what you've ended up stating.

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

>
> I know and that's what I meant with that it doesn't even have the
> support for foreign keys. Though I must say that there are not much
> dbms's that can beat MySQL at the point of system requirements and
> price/performance, it's a good home/small business server... of course
> no one should even think about using it for more than, say, keeping
> track of members of a local sports club or so :-)

        Even at these limited uses it will endanger your data and make you think erroneously, besides making you write unnecessary code; it's not good for anything that I know of.

        Actually today PostgreSQL is usually faster than MySQL. It's hard to get performance when your design starts wrong.

> Maybe I didn't made my points to clear, English isn't my native language
> and I'm not at my best when it comes to database-related terms (I'm no
> database expert, just an end user :)

        Then I suggest you read at least Date's An Introduction to Database

Systems before engaging in this newsgroup.

-- 
  _
/ \ Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra           +55 (11) 246 96 07
\ / http://homepage.mac.com./leandrod/     BRASIL    +55 (43) 322 89 71
  X  http://tutoriald.sourceforge.net./     mailto:lgcdutra@terra.com.br
/ \ Campanha fita ASCII, contra correio HTML    mailto:leandrod_at_mac.com

Received on Thu Sep 20 2001 - 18:09:35 CDT