Re: Separate PK in Jxn Tbl?

"Sylvain Lafontaine" <sylvain aei ca (fill the blanks, no spam please)> wrote in message news:%23zkseSHYIHA.4808_at_TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Your argument about the use of a DRI WITH ON UPDATE CASCADE is an
> interesting argument and one that come back often;

Really? I can put my hand on my heart and say I've never seen anyone suggest it when they cross-post to comp.databases.theory. I don't doubt it has come up, but I do doubt it is often.

> however it's not a silver buller.

I implicitly allowed that it is not a silver bullet by actually suggesting the kinds of reasons one might exclude it.

> First of all, it's another level of complexity that you must add to the
> design of your database; ie, you must make sure that they are all there
> and no one is missing.

Of course one must make sure "they are all there"; you are absolutely right. But it absurd to suggest doing that is "another level of complexity". It is trivial to do it, and trivial to check that you've done it by querying the DB catalogs.

> Second, this DRI cannot be used with cyclic relationship with SQL-Server
> but with Oracle, you can. (From your example, I believe that you are
> working with Oracle).

I'm not. But the fact that you are distinguishing the behaviour of particular products gets close to the real problem. The real problem is that the products we use are all more or less defective, but instead of clamouring to have them fixed (by establishing suitable standards and following them) we promote workarounds as if they are actually desirable. I have no problem at all with people describing workarounds for defects but I have a major problem when it is implied that the workaround is some kind of best-practice or even desirable.

> On SQL-Server, you must use triggers to implement such a feature when
> there is a cyclic relationship. Of course, when you are dealing with tens
> and hundreds of relationships, this can quickly translate into a
> nightmare. There is also the qestion of the diminution of performance and
> of general design: when you have to update multiples records on multiple
> tables for what should be the change of a single value in a single table
> make it hard to believe that this is a proper normalized database design

First of all, updates to keys should be very rare. A fundamental property of a well-chosen key is that it is reasonably stable. Imposing the little self-discipline required to make sure you choose stable keys is inconsequential when compared to the overall database design effort.

Secondly, even having to update hundreds of tables to amend a key is only about the same effort required to insert all those rows in the first place. Against the background of work the system does all the time, that will be inconsequential. (Of course, if you unwisely choose a key that is not stable, your argument would be more nearly correct. But that is why the long-standing advice has been to avoid keys that are not stable.)

> and this situation quickly worsen if you have to take into account the
> correspondance with backups, reports and linked databases; all systems for
> which there is no automatic DRI.

I don't entirely agree with all these reasons, but as I said in my earlier post, there often *are* good reasons why one might not be able to use ON UPDATE CASCADE in a particular product and I will take your word for it that these reasons apply with the product you use. My challenge to you was to signal you know that, and you have now done so.

> But why make it simpler when you can make it harder?

Hm.

> Finally, I don't understand your example at all. You are introducing us
> to the NATURAL JOIN and USING statement that have been introduced by
> Oracle in its 9i version (also in MySQL and Postgres, I believe) but I
> fail to see what this has to do with the subject of this thread; the use
> of a separate PK in a junction table and its highly related topic, ie. the
> use of natural keys versus the use of surrogate keys. There is no
> relationship at all between a NATURAL JOIN and a natural key and the
> Natural Join can be used as easily with a surrogate key than with a
> natural key.

I am confused about your argument here. I was giving counter-example to disprove the claim that composite keys make the SQL code more complex, which was being presented as an argument to introduce yet more, spurious, synthetic/surrogate keys. In fact if you read my example carefully, you will have seen that I talked explicitly about *three* synthetic keys because I aware I was already using two (order number and item number).

> The only thing that is important with the Natural Join is the name of the
> key. (BTW, if you were to ask me what I'm thinking about this little
> monstruosity, I would tell you that this is a perfect example of a Pandora
> box.).

Well, I have to admit that I'm not over-fond of relying on names to imply that two columns represent the same thing, so in fact I never use that syntax. I do prefer to assert all the conditions on all the key columns explicitly and I just don't notice the few extra keystrokes when it's a composite key. But on the other hand, I find it monstrous when I see two or more distinct names for colunms that do represent the same thing.

> And finally, a for your request of asking me to convince you that I'm
> properly understand the problem here of to etablish that I'm credible: I
> can tell you that I have absolutely no intention of doing it

And yet you have greatly increased your credibility with this post. I still disagree with what you've said, but I can see you know more about what you're talking about than it seemed before. Before, I thought you were ignorant and uncurious. Now I see you are merely wrong. :-)

> and that I have absolutely no interest at all about what you are thinking
> of me.

That's very healthy. You shouldn't.

>The only things that are of interest to me are the arguments that I'm
>seeing posted here - whatever the people who might write them - but for
>someone who has just make a confusion between a natural key and the NATURAL
>JOIN, asking for such a thing make it looks very strange.

I make no such confusion, and a quick glance at my earlier post will confirm it.

Roy Received on Sun Jan 27 2008 - 12:53:55 CET