> I regularly find myself having to merge two (or more) records referenced by > numerous foreign keys... resulting in having to update many tables to > perform this merge. I would find it really useful if there was (and maybe > there already is and I just didn't found it) a way to do this in one update > (performing the cascade). > > If I am not the only one who would consider this useful, I will gladly add a > ticket for this... I just didn't want to "pollute" the tracker with something > I > would be the only one finding it useful. > > Example : Table Patient with a sequence ID often has duplicate (after two > clinics merge or simply data entry error) but has numerous dependant tables > referencing this ID.
I don't think that this is a feature that should be considered. There are existing ways to resolve this: 1- Rethink your schema, you could treat the "Patient" table as an "Clinic Patient/Alias" table and define a separate "Master Patient" to which each "Clinic Patient/Alias" entry would refer to. In this way you only have 1 level of entries to update. 2- create SPs which perform the required updates, based on coded rules for each column/FK. Yes, this requires that you create/maintain the SPs but you are in control of the operation/scope. 3- create an SP which uses system tables to navigate the schema to follow the FK relationships, and performs the necessary updates. The SP would need the name of the master table to start from, the name of the column to be updated, the original key value and the new key value. Sean ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Start Your Social Network Today - Download eXo Platform Build your Enterprise Intranet with eXo Platform Software Java Based Open Source Intranet - Social, Extensible, Cloud Ready Get Started Now And Turn Your Intranet Into A Collaboration Platform http://p.sf.net/sfu/ExoPlatform Firebird-Devel mailing list, web interface at https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/firebird-devel
