Re: partial "on-delete set null" constraint - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Alban Hertroys
Subject Re: partial "on-delete set null" constraint
Date
Msg-id 65343F13-8D73-48DA-BFC7-5653630FAD7A@gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: partial "on-delete set null" constraint  (Rafal Pietrak <rafal@ztk-rp.eu>)
List pgsql-general
> On 03 Jan 2015, at 18:05, Rafal Pietrak <rafal@ztk-rp.eu> wrote:
> W dniu 03.01.2015 o 16:48, Alban Hertroys pisze:
>>> On 03 Jan 2015, at 15:20, Rafal Pietrak <rafal@ztk-rp.eu> wrote:
>>>
> [-------------------------]
>>> Yes. This is precisely the "semantics" I'm trying to put into the schema: after a username is "released" from
service,all it's messages become "from unknown user".... unless thoroughly investigated :) 
>> It also makes a foreign key reference unusable: There is no unique parent record to match it to, so what exactly are
youreferencing? 
>
> Nothing.
>
> That's precisely my point here. I'd like to have "objects" in mailboxes table left "hanging around" after it's
"disconnected"from service. FK acting like a power cord of a vacuum cleaner: when in service: hooked into the wall;
afterthat vacuum cleaner stays there, only disconnected (and the socket can be used by others). 

Then you should make that reference to maildomains(domain) also NULLable. Otherwise you aren’t referencing ‘nothing’,
butpossibly every user in the domain (we won’t know, since NULL is ‘unknown’ after all and that could match anything). 

Alban Hertroys
--
If you can't see the forest for the trees,
cut the trees and you'll find there is no forest.



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