At 02:13 AM 29/06/2006, you wrote:

>It would seem to make sense to put common, essentially static,
>reference tables into a separate database that could be accessible to
>various projects, each project corresponding to a separate database.

No, it doesn't make sense from the point of view of database integrity.

If you have multiple projects that access the same data, it's not a
common-sense notion at all to make separate databases for each
project. The idea of the database is centralise and manage the
organisation's data. One of the points of using a relational
database is to make it feasible to restrict the access to data access
in a gazillion ways and at as many levels as one needs.

>Helen Borrie's text mentiones transactionality across multiple
>databases, but I have been unable to find how you would refer to such
>a lookup table from another database either as a foreign key or in a
>WHERE clause.

You can't. Firebird does not support cross-database queries (as
Helen also says in her book :-> )

Oh, and Helen would die of shame if she ever used the word
"transactionality". Even "transactional" is an etymological
abomination that makes her squirm...though she pleads guilty to using it. :-)

./heLen