On 6/5/07, Earnie Boyd <earnie@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
How is what you describe different from a child node dependent on a parent node? If I have a content type relationship mapping table that maps a parent to a child then the children become the ``follow on'' objects.
A comment is dependent in a modeling sense on a node. That is, if a comment says "Hey, I think that's a great idea" in response to an idea posted in a blog, that comment BY ITSELF without the node makes no sense. It is meaningless. One can certainly construct relationships between nodes containing custom data which exhibit the same dependency, of not making sense without their parent node. Likewise, one could construct relationships where there is no dependency, where the nodes make sense by themselves. That does not alter the basic fact that comments are always dependent objects. Most nodes today are independent objects. Since we are trying to optimize comment behavior specifically, and dependent data in general, it's good to keep that in mind. Creating dependent relationships makes it harder to optimize, especially when selection and sorting criteria are in a joined table.