[Open-bio-l] FK cascades

Hilmar Lapp hlapp@gnf.org
Wed, 21 Aug 2002 15:18:56 -0700


Maintaining is FK integrity in the SW layer is not only inevitably 
unsafe and prone to slip, it also makes for _ugly_ code in the 
adaptors.

I don't know exactly what Postgres is capable of, but I'd assume it 
enforces FK constraints and can do cascading deletes. Oracle does. 
It seems InnoDB from one of the most recent versions on can do, too.

How much outcry would it cause to require MySQL-Max > 3.23.50 to run 
BioSQL, and then migrate to using InnoDB as the table handler? 
(There are couple problems with the InnoDB implementation of FK 
constraint enforcement, but if no-one messes with the table 
definitions and the order they are created, these can be handled I 
believe.)

	-hilmar

(Still cross-posting, but soon I'll post to the biosql-list only. 
Hopefully I'm not going to be alone there ...)

--
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Hilmar Lapp                            email: lapp at gnf.org
GNF, San Diego, Ca. 92121              phone: +1-858-812-1757
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