On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
> > I highly doubt that. Relating two tables to each other via a key, and
> > joining them together, allows you to do everything that inheritance
> > allows you to do, but also more. If you have difficulty with keys and
> > joins, well, you really probably want to stop and fix that problem
> > before you do more work on a relational database....
>
> I'm still not convinced of this. For example, my friend has a hardware
> e-store and every different class of hardware has different properties. ie
> modems have baud and network cards have speed and video cards have ram. He
> simply just has a 'products' table from which he extends
> 'networkcard_products', etc. with the additional fields. Easy.
And what's the problem with networkcard_products being a separate table
that shares a key with the products table?
CREATE TABLE products (product_id int, ...)
CREATE TABLE networkcard_products_data (product_id int, ...)
CREATE VIEW networkcard_products AS
SELECT products.product_id, ...
FROM products
JOINT networkcard_products_data USING (product_id)
What functionality does table inheritance offer that this traditional
relational method of doing things doesn't?
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
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