I've been quiet on this topic thus far and figured that since i'm maintaining PostgreSQL for core, I might as well speak up. I agree that ref integrity is important for any respectable application. There are the occasions with Drupal (when developing mainly) where a query goes in with an ID of zero. It can go un-noticed for sometime as well. +1 to referential integrity. It'll involve a lot of effort to ensure queries are ordered correctly (most of them should be) and their success will need to be tested. No small feat. -- <spam> -- It's also funny to see how many people out there disregard PostgreSQL as a usable DBMS. They seem to think MySQL is the bee's knees of free DBMS's. True: they install MySQL at many ISPs. I believe the main reason for that initially was because of phpMyAdmin. phpPgAdmin now exists and allows people to gain access to the _better_ DBMS. As far as recommending a DBMS for new sites hosted on VPS's or dedicated boxes goes. I'd cheer out a very loud and unbiased "PostgreSQL". Last year saw many modules gain PostgreSQL capabilities. Some patches I submitted _still_ haven't been committed. Bummer eh? -- <spam> -- -- Sammy Spets Synerger Pty Ltd http://synerger.com On 20-Jan-07 16:56, Dries Buytaert wrote:
On 20 Jan 2007, at 01:00, Morbus Iff wrote:
To some degree, "referential integrity" sounds all awesome and "yay, save me from myself" but, really, Drupal's been working just fine without it, and I see no huge reason to just "add it on".
And then, the DBA said to the PHP developer: "Hey, my PHP code is spaghetti code, but it is working just fine. I see no huge reason to make it readable".
Or says the security expert to the PHP developer: "Hey, I don't sanitize my inputs, but it is working just fine. I see no huge reason to make it secure".
There are people that care deeply about clean and readable code, people that care deeply about secure code, and people that care deeply about the correctness of their data.
When talking with people of the PostgreSQL community, for example, it is clear that they steer away from Drupal, because we don't take their industry serious. By adding support for referential integrity, we're reaching out to people that know more about databases. It wouldn't hurt to have some database experts in our community.
-- Dries Buytaert :: http://www.buytaert.net/