On Tue, 2006-04-11 at 14:13, Rodrigo Sakai wrote: > Hi, > > I think this is an old question, but I want to know if it really is > well worth to not create some foreign keys an deal with the > referential integrity at application-level????? > Specifically, the system we are developing is a server/cliente > architecture that the server is the database and the fat client is an > application developed in DELPHI!!! > If ref integrity is important, you'll have to do it either in the app or the database. Almost always, it's faster to let the database do it, as there's less traffic across the wire required to maintain ref integrity, plus, the guys who wrote the database have spent years making sure race conditions won't scram your data. For simple, straight forward FK->PK relationships, you will likely NOT be able to beat the database in terms of either reliability or performance with your own code.
