Hi Tim,

> I am busy building a database that enforces strict referential integrity.

I

> have been advised not to use foreign keys in certain circumstances, as it
> would severely degrade the database performance. In order to enforce the
> same referential integrity, I would like to use triggers to prevent the
> user deleting or changing a record where the record is referenced by
> another table.

Short advice: use foreign keys.

The situations where it degrades performance have become less - I think -
with Firebird 1.5 and should be fixed on the server side (that is, by the
engine
developers), not on the "user side" (that is: you).


With regards,

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - developer tool for InterBase, Firebird & MS SQL Server.
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com