Hi Helen,

Just want to clarify two things you said...

> Wrong, I answered in great detail.

I did not see the response either, so I dont know what happened to it.

> Foreign keys are good to use for many master-detail and
> parent-child relationships and for intersection tables;
> and evil to use for lookup relationships.

That last line I would change to...

"inappropriate to use for lookup relationships in the current versions
of Interbase".


There is nothing conceptually wrong with using foreign keys for
lookups, in fact it is technically correct. It is just that IB does
not provide the means to implement this as efficiently as it should.
Hopefully this may change in future versions.

I have and do use FKs on lookups as a shorthand way to get where I am
going and to save some code. When the main table is not of high
volume I usually leave such definitions in place - since they are
technically correct and very convenient. My own opinion is that the
hand-coding of relationship management is only really necessary or
appropriate on high volume / high frequency tables.


Geoff Worboys
Telesis Computing