At 14:27 2001.03.24 +1100, you wrote:

>> Circular foreign key dependencies are natural and
>> useful (contentious statement #1),

Can you provide a one good example to illustrate where
to have a circular reference is natural and "a must"?

I never used circular reference in my life and never felt
a need for that. I agree, maybe due to limited experience. :)

Sounds like the must-need for multiple inheritance in C++,
which caused a non-stop theoretical battle, and later, Java
could live without it, though introducing interfaces.

>Among the solutions:
>
> 1. alter table blah drop foreign key (seg1, seg2)

The rules of thumb, I am using:

1) Never use unnamed constraints;
2) Drop constraint first, drop table last;

Regards,
Glebas