May 26, 2009 at 9:44 am
so I am creating a database where I have a parent table with multiple columns that I would like to have reference a single column in a child table. I would like to create relationships between the columns in the parent table and the column in the child table. For an example, I'm passing this to SQL
parent table:
CREATE TABLE Parent(val1 int NOT NULL, val2 int NOT NULL, val3 int NOT NULL, val4 int NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (val1), UNIQUE (val2), UNIQUE(val3), UNIQUE(val4))
child table:
CREATE TABLE Child(val1 int NOT NULL, val2 int, val3 int, val4 int, PRIMARY KEY(val1))
relationships
ALTER TABLE Child ADD FOREIGN KEY (val1) REFERENCES Parent(val2)
ALTER TABLE Child ADD FOREIGN KEY (val1) REFERENCES Parent(val3)
ALTER TABLE Child ADD FOREIGN KEY (val1) REFERENCES Parent(val4)
These relationships are added fine, but when I try to update data to the child table, I get an error because columns 'val1' will contain data from many columns in the parent table, but each relationship requires that each value only appear in the referenced column in the Parent table. So my understanding is that this format will not work. However, I want the values in the Child table to column to be referencing the values in all the Parent table columns. Is there a way to get this to work? Thanks for your help!
May 26, 2009 at 12:57 pm
veritas_86 (5/26/2009)
so I am creating a database where I have a parent table with multiple columns that I would like to have reference a single column in a child table. I would like to create relationships between the columns in the parent table and the column in the child table. For an example, I'm passing this to SQLparent table:
CREATE TABLE Parent(val1 int NOT NULL, val2 int NOT NULL, val3 int NOT NULL, val4 int NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (val1), UNIQUE (val2), UNIQUE(val3), UNIQUE(val4))
child table:
CREATE TABLE Child(val1 int NOT NULL, val2 int, val3 int, val4 int, PRIMARY KEY(val1))
relationships
ALTER TABLE Child ADD FOREIGN KEY (val1) REFERENCES Parent(val2)
ALTER TABLE Child ADD FOREIGN KEY (val1) REFERENCES Parent(val3)
ALTER TABLE Child ADD FOREIGN KEY (val1) REFERENCES Parent(val4)
These relationships are added fine, but when I try to update data to the child table, I get an error because columns 'val1' will contain data from many columns in the parent table, but each relationship requires that each value only appear in the referenced column in the Parent table. So my understanding is that this format will not work. However, I want the values in the Child table to column to be referencing the values in all the Parent table columns. Is there a way to get this to work? Thanks for your help!
Altough it is possible to use a unique column to be referenced in a FK definition, you can off course only reference to a single column having the common values !
Meaning, you can indeed - as youd did - reference multiple times, to diffenrent colmuns, but unless the ne value is available in all the referenced columns, the update cannot be done because it will violate the FK relation.
That is why you can only define one primary key on a table.
The goal is that only a primary key will be used for FK relationships.
So, if anyone is pointing to a unique constraint, you should actually convert that to use the PK of that unique key.
Also keep in mind, you should know where the value came from !
There is no "try this or maybe that" option when it comes to data integrity !
Johan
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May 26, 2009 at 3:19 pm
It sounds like you want the value in the child table to match one of the columns in the parent table. Can you explain the business case for this? You may be offered another solution for this that works better.
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