Path: news.f.de.plusline.net!news-fra1.dfn.de!news.tele.dk!feed118.news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!nx02.iad01.newshosting.com!newshosting.com!post01.iad01!not-for-mail Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2007 07:45:07 -0700 From: DA Morgan Organization: Puget Sound Oracle Users Group User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 (Windows/20070509) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.databases.oracle.server,comp.databases.oracle.misc Subject: Re: not using foreign keys? References: <1180979621.128496.281540@n4g2000hsb.googlegroups.com> <46644eb3$0$16320$88260bb3@free.teranews.com> In-Reply-To: <46644eb3$0$16320$88260bb3@free.teranews.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <1181141106.374929@bubbleator.drizzle.com> Cache-Post-Path: bubbleator.drizzle.com!unknown@216.162.218.178 X-Cache: nntpcache 3.0.1 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Lines: 23 X-Complaints-To: abuse@csolutions.net Xref: news.f.de.plusline.net comp.databases.oracle.server:199016 comp.databases.oracle.misc:79862 Brian Peasland wrote: > A worse approach would be to let the application handle the referential > integrity. But don't get me started on that.... What we somehow need to educate these front-end developers about is that front-ends are technically incapable of enforcing referential integrity. They give the appearance of doing so but actually do not and can not. No front-end designable is capable of keeping someone accessing the data with any other tool from destroying it be that batch loads with SQL*Loader, DBAs with SQL*Plus, or a host of tools that use ODBC or JDBC. It is really a question of education and we need to educate them about those factors we think of as basic starting with the fact that data has value. -- Daniel A. Morgan University of Washington damorgan@x.washington.edu (replace x with u to respond) Puget Sound Oracle Users Group www.psoug.org