Database design question

Hi,

We are converting legacy files into Oracle database. Through normalization process, we have a parent table and several child tables associated with it. Only parent table contains the unique key (combination of 5 columns). The child tables have an Oracle sequence number associated with parent table but without these 5 columns. This worries me a little. If there is anything wrong on the logic to build Oracle sequence numbers in the parent and child tables. The records in the child tables may never find its parent record.

What's the pro and com of this design? One obvious advantage is space saving. What do the most people do for this kind of situation? Thanks. Received on Wed May 14 2003 - 11:53:32 CDT