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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> RE: FK Constraints
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Holman, Rodney [mailto:rodney.holman_at_lodgenet.com]
>
> You are running into a primary point of contention between
> many DBA's and
> developers. Dev's don't like the use of PK/FK relationships
> within the
> database because it is not always portable across multiple
> RDBMS's. By
> making the app handle all the referential integrity issues
> they can say
> "Yes, our system runs on Oracle, Sybase, Informix, MS SQL
> Server, or even
> Access ...." All they need the RDBMS to do is store tables
> and indexes then.
> Many third party apps use this approach. The problem is when
> their code is
> correct and perfect, they are right. You don't NEED FK's.
I have heard this argument before and I don't see that it has any justification in fact. If a developper came to me and said:
"My application is going to be used against several databases, so a) Constraints may not always be supported in the underlying RDBMS, and b) Anyway my code does things right",
I would answer
a) Why not use constraints where they are supported, and
b) If your code does things right, why do you care if the constraints are there? If your code isn't right, then constraints will help you find the bugs.
Jacques R. Kilchoer
(949) 754-8816
Quest Software, Inc.
8001 Irvine Center Drive
Irvine, California 92618
U.S.A.
http://www.quest.com
Received on Mon Mar 19 2001 - 15:16:26 CST
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