CASCADE DELETE performance

Hi there,

I have a database that contains tables that are nested up to four levels deep, i.e. the top-level table has dependents in a child table, which have dependents in another child table ... and so on.

The tables are referenced with foreign keys using CASCADE DELETE, and each table has a primary key of one field and a unique index that contains several fields.

The problem is that a DELETE of one or more records on the top-level table (causing cascade deletes on the dependent tables) is very slow.

Are there any tricks to speed-up CASCADE DELETEs or DELETEs in general? I'm not a database expert but I think the reason for the sluggish delete is that Oracle has to maintain the indices during the deletes... If that is the case: can I get around it without affecting other users that are trying to access the tables?

Thanks in advance ...

    Ingo Received on Tue Aug 24 1999 - 16:26:36 CDT