[development] Referential integrity -- finally?

[Khalid B]

On 1/20/07, Karoly Negyesi <karoly at negyesi.net> wrote:
>
> > Drupal is kindof database independent. Though no-one has managed to
> integrate
> > sqlite because of 'things' (locking) that Drupal requires.
>
> My hopes are that SQLite support will happen with Drupal 6. Tadej
> Ba&#353;a has written the code and he says he is running Drupal with it
> since 4.5 which is quite believable. He also volunteers to be the
> maintainer:
> http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/development/2007-January/021806.html My
> hopes are that Drupal will run out of the box, without any setup whatsoever.
> LOCKs are on their way out, killes is nurturing the no lock patch I
> abandoned. And even if they do not die, they are there only to avoid some
> races which simply do not happen on the small sites that are targets for
> SQLite (ie. quite small sites).


Wasn't the other problem is that SQLite does not have some ALTER variant
that we use, so updates to the schema not possible? Has this been recently
solved too? If so, then good news.



Back on topic, referential integrity is the way forward. Not only does it
make us friends with the PostgreSQL folk, but it is good practice in general
to have it, regardless of the underlying database engine.

The debate about RI is a non-debate. It is a historical issue. There was a
database used by hosting companies called mSQL (mini SQL) and it was not
free, MySQL stepped in to fill the gap with a free database (as in cost-free
initially), with the same syntax, ...etc.. MySQL's popularity skyrocketed,
then it became free (as in liberty). They argued that RI is not necessary
since web apps are mostly read intensive, and they shined in the read
intensive arena.

Now, true databases all have RI. MySQL themselves had InnoDB, and most
hosting companies for the last 2 years or so support InnoDB. If only Oracle
would not have nabbed that, it would have been the way forward. Now they are
developing Falcon and solidDB, ...etc.

Regardless, RI is needed.

+1.
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