Re: Disabling constraints in 7.1.6 doesn't appear to work

We also ran into this in December. Though, because we did not have complete familiarlity with the database, we chalked it up to missing some constraint somewhere (though I believe it highly unlikely - we identified all constraints from the user_constraints table and disabled them).
As we worked around the problem, we never reported it to Oracle.

Steve

In article <312A13D9.7772_at_cincom.com>, bbiggs_at_cincom.com says...
:>
:>I have found an interesting situation in Oracle 7.1.6.2 on HP-UX. It
:>seems that even though you disable a foreign key constraint on a table,
:>you are still unable to drop the parent table to which that constraint
:>referred. You must actually DROP the foreign key constraint (not just
:>DISABLE it) before you can DROP the parent table.
:>
:>Is Oracle supposed to work this way? I would think that if the
:>constraint is disabled, you should be able to do anything to the parent
:>table. So even though the SQL manual says that disabling a foreign key
:>constraint prevents Oracle from enforcing it, Oracle must still prevent
:>you from DROPping the table as long as the constraint exists, enabled
 or
:>disabled. I can kind of see how this might make sense, but at the same
:>time, if the constraint is disabled, Oracle should ignore it. You
:>shuold only get an error when you try to enable the constraint because
:>the referenced table does not exist.
:>
:>Has anyone else run into this issue? Is this a bug in Oracle or a
:>subtle "feature"?
:>
:>Thanks,
:>Brian
:>
:>--
:>Brian M. Biggs mailto:bbiggs_at_cincom.com
:>Cincom Systems, Inc. voice: (513) 677-7661
:>http://www.cincom.com/
Received on Thu Feb 22 1996 - 00:00:00 CET