[Koha] MySQL and foreign keys

[Williams, Olwen - SAL]

I'm not about to argue one database over another. I've worked a lot in
databases that don't enforce integrity, and you need to include the
integrity in your code.  This is sometimes easier said than done.  We began
using Postgres at the very start of Koha, but found problems making some
queries run efficiently.  MySQL ran them so we changed.  I don't know to
what extent the problem were in my lack of experience and how much was the
fault of Postgres, and how much the two database have changed in the
meantime.

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Currie [mailto:lcurrie at CalAcademy.Org]
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 1:38 PM
To: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
Subject: [Koha] MySQL and foreign keys


Last night I attended a PerlMongers group meeting here in Oakland, CA
and one of the presenters at the meeting asserted that MySQL could not
claim to be a completely relational database because it doesn't let you
define foreign keys.  As a result, he feels that MySQL fails the ACID
test (atomicity, consistency, referential integrity, and durability),
and he advised people to avoid using it in Perl applications and instead
use Postgres or some other relational database with more stability.  He
cited an example where you might have a one-to-one relationship between
primary key values in two tables and if you deleted a value from one of
the tables, MySQL would leave that value in the other table as dangling
data without warning you to take care of it and as a result really mess
up your database.

Can anyone on the Koha list comment on this assertion and what the
consequences might be for Koha?


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