that's neat.  In my app, it would also make sense to have the 2 FK's
in the relation db as a PK, because a 'whatever' can only belong to a
node once. I think I tried something like this at some point, but pg
wouldn't let me make a table with a PK and no other cols. I had a
"dummy" col for a bit ... :-)

But I already tried the single-table way, and it is quite clean. If
you say that eiher 'null' or self.id in the table means 'I am root of
this node', there's no ambiguity. As I have it going and it seems
simple and workable I'll stick with that, I think.

cheers.

On 12/21/06, Darren Duncan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At 3:51 PM -0600 12/20/06, Brandon Black wrote:
>On 12/20/06, Daniel McBrearty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>Is there a way to get the id of the object being created in the
>>statement doing the creation? I don't even know if the db (postgresql)
>>can do that ... ?
>
>Of course, if you really are making a tree or graph, and
>self-reference is just a way to say "root-level node", I'd say just
>make it nullable and treat nulls as root-level nodes and have an
>easier life.

I have a better idea.  Split the table into 2 tables, such as
"whatever" and "whatever_relation", where the former has details
about "whatever" themselves and the latter has 2 foreign keys into
the former, indicating a parent-child relationship.  Then you can
have both full referential integrity plus no nulls, and the situation
is generally more flexible to your needs.

Moreover, you can switch between a tree and a graph based on whether
the child-pointing field in the second table has a uniqueness
constraint on it.  Its easy to recognize root nodes as they are
"whatever" records which are not referred to by a child-pointing
field of "whatever relation".

-- Darren Duncan

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--
Daniel McBrearty
email : danielmcbrearty at gmail.com
www.engoi.com : the multi - language vocab trainer
BTW : 0873928131

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