Re: Distributed foreign keys (was Re: Category Types)

"Paul Vernon" <paul.vernon_at_ukk.ibmm.comm> wrote in message news:bd9khq$rgg$1_at_gazette.almaden.ibm.com...
> P.S. does anyone share my dislike of the term 'Foreign Key'? to me it's a
> misnomer, for one they are not Keys (the FK columns do not have to be
unique)
> and if "Foreign" is meant to imply that *all* the values in the PK are
also in
> the FK then that is wrong also. Plus I always spell foreign wrong (i.e.
> foriegn)

The term is both correct and meaningful to my way of thinking. I consider a foreign key to be a syntactically defined constraint such that the referencing columns consist of at least all the columns from a candidate key of the referenced table. The referenced candidate key is thus a key and foreign to the table. Perhaps that's not actually true in SQL? I've never experimented with any devious cases.

But I type it wrong as well...I think its a finger rhythm thing.

--
David Best
(Remove the obvious to reply)