Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!csustan!polyslo!lchirica
From: lchirica@polyslo.UUCP (Laurian Chirica)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Referential Integrity Constraints (Long)
Message-ID: <1401@polyslo.UUCP>
Date: 3 Mar 88 05:20:22 GMT
References: <1342@polyslo.UUCP> <502@ashton.UUCP>
Reply-To: lchirica@polyslo.UUCP (Laurian Chirica)
Organization: Cal Poly State University -- San Luis Obispo
Lines: 18
Keywords: Referential Integrity, Triggers, SYBASE, UNIFY


In article <502@ashton.UUCP> cy@ashtate.UUCP (Cy Shuster) writes:
>I'm surprised you had to write code for a CODASYL DBMS to enforce
>cascaded deletes. In the IDMS implementation, ....

No, I think I stated the opposite: I damaged a database due to
cascaded deletes.  That's why I am very uncomfortable with cascaded
deletes/updates in relational databases.  I do not know of any relational
DBMS that performs cascaded deletes, but I have seen some proposals in
various papers.  As a "compromise" the syntax should differentiate
between a simple delete request which is rejected if a referential
constraint is violated (eg. UNIFY) and a cascaded delete which goes
ahead and (potentially) empties out the whole database (eg. ???).

-- 
Laurian M. Chirica  (lchirica@polyslo.UUCP)
Computer Science Department
California Polytechnic State University (CAL POLY)
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 - (805) 756-1332