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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> Re: FK Constraints
Ramani:
I live daily with the negative effects of referential integrity enforced
(sometimes) at the application level. From my standpoint, there have been
no "pros" to this method. I need to use a lot of data from our mainframe
DB2 database, where all of the RI is written into their applications. Now
I access the data from another avenue - Oracle's transparent gateway - and
there is no way for me to tell what tables should join, what the valid
values are, and even what codes within a column represent! Of course, when
they designed this database 10 years ago, they never took into
consideration that another database would access this data; they only
thought that their COBOL programs would touch the data. Years later,
programmers have moved on, the world has changed, but their database stays
the same. The have one huge LOV table where they store codes based on
what program/screen needs them (as far as I can figure). This entire
design shows a lack of vision.
Sorry to ramble, but this is a sore point with me. The bottom line here is that every time someone else needs to access the data, it takes at least 5 times longer to understand the relationships and make things work. And, we are never sure that what we are getting is right. I have at least 20 scientists accessing this data. Imagine not only the productivity that is lost, but can we be sure that the results produced from the analysis of this data is correct based on its lack of credibility?
I would never, ever, ever, ever agree to a database without referential integrity imposed by the RDBMS that was in my control.
I thank you for the opportunity to vent (-_-)
Phone: (352) 796-7211, Ext. 4033
Fax: (352) 754-6776
Email: Mailto:Sherrie.Kubis_at_swfwmd.state.fl.us
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