Re: design question

robur.6_at_gmail.com wrote:
> What do you think as being more important, sticking to normalization
> rules or choosing a compromise that will add some redundant data but
> under a strict control using foreign keys? Can you spot advantages/
> disadvantages of each variant? Or perhaps you could suggest a better
> solution…

In general: Declarative constraints on fully normalised relvars is the best solution. If your DBMS doesn't support multi-relvar constraints other than foreign keys (and this is the case for most SQL DBMSs), my personal opinion is that it is better to denormalise and use foreign superkeys, than to use procedural triggers---as long as you make sure all anomalies (except the inevitable redundancy) usually associated with denormalisation are eliminated by the foreign superkey(s).

In other words, I think your solution is fine.

-- 
Jon