On Wed, Apr 12, 2006 at 07:45:17AM -0700, Craig A. James wrote: > All good advice, but... there are no absolutes in this world. > Application-enforced referential integrity makes sense if (and probably > ONLY if): > > 1. You have only one application that modifies the data. (Otherwise, you > have to duplicate the rules across many applications, leading to a > code-maintenance nightmare). You forgot something: 1a: You know that there will never, ever, ever, ever, be any other application that wants to talk to the database. I know tons of people that get burned because they go with something that's "good enough for now", and then regret that decision for years to come. > 2. If your application crashes and leaves a mess, it's not a catastrophe, > and you have a good way to clean it up. For example, a bank shouldn't do > this, but it might be OK for a computer-aided-design application, or the > backend of a news web site. > > 3. You have application-specific knowledge about when you can skip > referential integrity and thereby greatly improve performance. For > example, you may have batch operations where large numbers of rows are > temporarily inconsistent. > > If your application doesn't meet ALL of these criteria, you probably should > use the database for referential integrity. > > Craig > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? > > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq > -- Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117 vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461
