OK, so I think I'm beginning to understand. So basically in my case I have a an item_id that I am using as the PK in the item table. So I would substitute that where you are using pk, and I could use the same column in the category table to keep them in sync. But I would need a new column for the primary key in the category table as the item_id would be repeated when one item is in multiple categories.
Levi "Consistency's Over-rated" Smith (: On Wednesday 17 August 2005 12:19 pm, Stewart Stremler wrote: > > Item (itm) > pk as int > description as varchar > . . . > > Category (cat) > pk as int > pkref as int > category as varchar > > > To get all items in the OLD category: > > SELECT itm.pk, itm.description > FROM itm, cat > WHERE cat.category = 'OLD' AND itm.pk = cat.pkref > > To get a list of all categories: > > SELECT distinct category FROM cat > > Etc. etc. > > You don't _need_ foreign keys to make such references. You might have a > consistency issue in that if you remove a row from the Item table, you'll > have stale data in the Category table, but that won't _hurt_ anything > until you start reusing primary keys. > > > -Stewart "Solve your problem with your tools at hand, improve it later" > Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
