[development] Referential integrity -- finally?

[Dries Buytaert]

On 23 Jan 2007, at 18:14, Derek Wright wrote:
>> His argument is IIRC that we should stick to as plain SQL as  
>> possible to not further increase the barrier of entry for people  
>> already knowing SQL.
>
> the main problem with this argument is the there's no "Standard" in  
> the "Standard Query Language" for table creation and schema  
> modifications across all the databases.  so, while anyone who knows  
> any variant of SQL (preferably the ANSI standard) can write SELECT  
> and UPDATE and JOIN and the rest, you *have* to have DB-specific  
> knowledge to create tables and add/remove/alter indexes or  
> columns.  to me, the lack of a standard here is the central point  
> -- if there was a standard a) our situation would be totally  
> different and b) we wouldn't need an abstraction layer.

The quality of this discussion has increased a lot since we discussed  
this last time for Drupal 5.0.  Great!

The 'database scheme definition' vs 'standard query language' (or  
'data manipulation language') argument make sense to me -- although  
it would be great if you had pointers to references.

Either way, I'm willing to reverse my position on creating database  
abstraction functions for create or altering SQL tables -- but not to  
build SELECT/UPDATE/INSERT queries.

We'll want to document some of the knowledge captured in this thread  
in the code comments -- it doesn't hurt to explain our design goals/ 
decisions.

--
Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/