我记得在播客014中听到Joel Spolsky提到他几乎从未使用过外键(如果我没记错的话)。然而,对我来说,它们对于避免数据库中的重复和后续数据完整性问题非常重要。

人们是否有一些可靠的理由(以避免与Stack Overflow原则一致的讨论)?

编辑:“我还没有创建外键的理由,所以这可能是我真正建立一个外键的第一个理由。”


当前回答

我一直认为不用它们是懒惰的表现。我被教导应该一直这样做。但后来,我没有听乔尔的讨论。他也许有充分的理由,我不知道。

其他回答

没有充分的理由不使用它们……除非孤行对你来说不是什么大问题。

From my experience its always better to avoid using FKs in Database Critical Applications. I would not disagree with guys here who say FKs is a good practice but its not practical where the database is huge and has huge CRUD operations/sec. I can share without naming ... one of the biggest investment bank of doesn't have a single FK in databases. These constrains are handled by programmers while creating applications involving DB. The basic reason is when ever a new CRUD is done it has to effect multiple tables and verify for each inserts/updates, though this won't be a big issue for queries affecting single rows but it does create a huge latency when you deal with batch processing which any big bank has to do as daily tasks.

最好避免fk,但它的风险必须由程序员来处理。

外键对于任何关系数据库模型都是必不可少的。

我相信有很多应用程序可以使用它,但这不是最好的主意。您不能总是指望您的应用程序能够正确地管理数据库,坦白地说,管理数据库不应该是您的应用程序非常关心的问题。

如果您正在使用关系数据库,那么似乎应该在其中定义一些关系。不幸的是,这种态度(您不需要外键)似乎被许多应用程序开发人员所接受,他们宁愿不为数据完整性等愚蠢的事情所困扰(但需要这样做,因为他们的公司没有专门的数据库开发人员)。通常在这些类型的数据库中,你很幸运只有主键;)

“在添加记录之前,检查对应的记录是否存在于另一个表中”是业务逻辑。

这里有一些你不希望在数据库中使用它的原因:

If the business rules change, you have to change the database. The database will need to recreate the index in a lot of cases and this is slow on large tables. (Changing rules include: allow guests to post messages or allow users to delete their account despite having posted comments, etc). Changing the database is not as easy as deploying a software fix by pushing the changes to the production repository. We want to avoid changing the database structure as much as possible. The more business logic there is in the database the more you increase the chances of needing to change the databae (and triggering re-indexing). TDD. In unit tests you can substitute the database for mocks and test the functionality. If you have any business logic in your database, you are not doing complete tests and would need to either test with the database or replicate the business logic in code for testing purposes, duplicating the logic and increasing the likelyhood of the logic not working in the same way. Reusing your logic with different data sources. If there is no logic in the database, my application can create objects from records from the database, create them from a web service, a json file or any other source. I just need to swap out the data mapper implementation and can use all my business logic with any source. If there is logic in the database, this isn't possible and you have to implement the logic at the data mapper layer or in the business logic. Either way, you need those checks in your code. If there's no logic in the database I can deploy the application in different locations using different database or flat-file implementations.