Hello Dean,
On 01-Apr-01 06:38:32, you wrote:
>I just want to make sure that I'm understanding what metabase supports.
>It does not support:
>- references
>- primary keys
>Does anyone find that this prevents you from using metabase? Or do you find
>that you have to hack your way around these deficiencies?
You can live perfectly well without both.
In practice primary keys are not much more than declaring a unique index on
the key fields.
References or foreign keys have a role of assuring database integrity.
This means that if you update your database tables and not assure that
specified references exist consistently, the DBMS will fail on those
updates.
It's not like it will avoid your application bugs, but at least if your
application has a bug that would break the database integrity, well placed
references/foreign keys will prevent that to happen. Your application will
just stop working until you fix the bugs.
>I use MySQL most of the time, so I've learned to design without explicit
>references, but I'd like to have the opportunity to at least specify
>references in the schema definition (which MySQL allows but doesn't do
>anything with). It seems that with a DBMS-independent abstraction layer like
>metabase something like this should be supported.
Support for primary/foreign keys is in my to do list. It just did not
become a priority because there are other things more important to add like
BLOBs.
Metabase is about to go Open Source. I am just waiting to finish a great
design tool before I announce when Metabase will be open for other
developers to contribute with work that I can't do right away.
Anyway, that should not stop you from using Metabase as it is. Metabase is
the only PHP database abstraction package that does schema management. You
can live without schema management, but it provides great schema
maintenance aid.
When support for primary/foreign keys is added explicitly you will be able
to upgrade your schemas without worry. So, you can use Metabase with
schema management as it is now.
Regards,
Manuel Lemos
Web Programming Components using PHP Classes.
Look at: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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