On Wed, Apr 12, 2006 at 10:36:28AM -0700, Craig A. James wrote: > Jim C. Nasby wrote: > >>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. > > No, I don't agree with this. Too many people waste time designing for > "what if..." scenarios that never happen. You don't want to be dumb and > design something that locks out a foreseeable and likely future need, but > referential integrity doesn't meet this criterion. There's nothing to keep > you from changing from app-managed to database-managed referential > integrity if your needs change. In this case your argument makes no sense, because you will spend far more time re-creating RI capability inside an application than if you just use what the database offers natively. It's certainly true that you don't want to over-engineer for no reason, but many times choices are made to save a very small amount of time or hassle up-front, and those choices become extremely painful later. -- 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
