----- Original Message Follows ----- From: "Stuart Cooper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> "*Really* big sites don't ever have referential >> integrity. Or if the few spots they do (like with >> financial transactions) it's implemented on the >application level (via, say, optimistic locking), never the >database level." > >Some large sites don't even use data types! > >http://www.thestar.com/News/article/189175 > >"in some cases the field for the social insurance number >was instead filled in with a birth date." But the fact that they don't use data types, or that some big sites supposedly may not use referential integrity does not provide justification that doing without is a Good Thing. The Canadian Tax article, to any competent systems admin, would provide incredibly strong justification FOR using typed and validated data and referential integrity. Anyone who has to be concerned with the integrity and validity of their data, which should be the case everywhere -- otherwise why bother collecting it -- has to enforce those aspects, and RDBMS are built to do that. "Turning it off" doesn't seem like a good way to address performance issues. Buy bigger/better hardware and adjust configuration settings. Data integrity has to be the first and fundamental concern. Performance is irrelevant if you can't trust the data -- would having answers faster be of any use if the answers were not reliable? ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
