On Sat, 2003-05-17 at 21:36, culley harrelson wrote:
> Are there any drawbacks to
> inheritance other than a decrease in portability?
Inheritance is very nifty and, more importantly, better represents the
data of some problems. I love it.
James Gregory and I have just had a short thread re: foreign keys into
inherited tables which you may wish to read (see archive). It's not a
problem per se, but rather a minor shortcoming (IMO).
Some things to note with inheritance:
- indices are not created on subtable columns automatically
- the super- & subtables are distinct tables
- select really just does a union select on subtables
- alter and drop cascade to subtables
I haven't had any problems with inheritance and mostly think it's
wonderful.
-Reece
--
Reece Hart, Ph.D. rkh@gene.com, http://www.gene.com/
Genentech, Inc. 650/225-6133 (voice), -5389 (fax)
Bioinformatics and Protein Engineering
1 DNA Way, MS-93 http://www.in-machina.com/~reece/
South San Francisco, CA 94080-4990 reece@in-machina.com, GPG: 0x25EC91A0
