[Theforum] Re: Changes to the VotingReqs document

[Warden, Matt]

elfur wrote:
>what happens if there is no anonresultsID ??

oy.

no. that's not going to happen. we're not going to have a primary key
everywhere but this table.

we're also not going to not enforce (excuse the double
negative) referential integrity. elfur, you said you can have anonymous
voting *and* integrity. well, that's just not so. i haven't read it in a
while, but rudy has an excellent article on
RI: http://www.evolt.org/article/RI_to_the_Rescue/18/13276/index.html

and i'm sure this article explaines *why* you can't have both better than
i could.

basically, you can't null a foreign key. except in mysql. but, of course,
they HAVE no foreign keys. my favorite quote:

"The FOREIGN KEY, CHECK, and REFERENCES clauses don't actually do
anything." (from the MySQL documentation)

good stuff.

>can't the table be automatically ordered by userID?

nope. tables have no order. when you query it through a SQL server and you
don't specify an order to order the resultset, the SQL server orders it by
default settings.


bottom line as i see it: this feature isn't worth the hack.


--
mattwarden
mattwarden.com