[Koha-devel] Re: Primary key does not exist !!!!!!!

[Chris Cormack]

On Fri, 2002-03-01 at 04:02, paul POULAIN wrote:
> Hi everybody,

> 
> My fisrt post is to CRY because of a BIG proble in the DB structure:
> In most tables there is no primary key defined.
> On some of them there are indexes, but no pk.
> 
> It's very, very dirty, ugly, infamous, ridiculous (and every -y or -ous 
> term you could find ;-)) from a theoric point of vue,
> It's the source of perf caveats, (joins make heavy use of primary key. 
> In fact, almost every "join" are usually on a pk of the right part of 
> the expression)
> It's the cause of some bugs in a practical point of vue : it's not 
> possible to use "append" sql command, which is VERY practical when you 
> have to store datas (the same form is shares for insert and modify 
> actions...)
> 
> So, unless there is a very important reason to do so (and I don't know 
> what could be such a reason...), I think a primary key must be defined 
> for every table in the DB...
> 
Yep a very valid point

> Who can include them in the db schema ? If you want a SQL patch to 
> correct the DB, I should be able to spend a few hours to do it.
> 
That would be great

> Note : for a 1st post, it may seem to be very critic. As you will see 
> later, I'm usually a happy man ;-))))) It's just that I've work a lot on 
> many DB (mySQL, Interbase, Informix...) and I'm very surprised with this 
> problem. I don't blame anybody.

Criticism is good :-) As long as its constructive which this is. It
makes better solutions. 
If having primary keys on every table will give a performance increase
thats great. 

Chris
-- 
Chris Cormack                                               Programmer
025 500 789                                  Katipo Communications Ltd
chris at katipo.co.nz                                    www.katipo.co.nz