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Beyond Foreign Keys (lackofimagination.org)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In a relational database, foreign keys are normally used to associate records stored in different tables, but wouldn’t it be nice to define relationships dynamically without having to add extra columns or tables? And while we’re at it, how about having sparse relationships by associating a record directly with any other record like “post X was last edited by user #123” or “post X was flagged for review by user #456” (who happens to be a moderator)?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So... a polymorphic many-to-many join table?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Yes, that's correct. Here's how an entry in the join table looks like:

{
  "id": 6,
  "sourceComp": "user",
  "sourceId": 2,
  "targetComp": "post",
  "targetId": 3,
  "type": "author",
  "createdAt": "2024-03-28T13:28:59.175Z",
  "updatedAt": "2024-03-28T13:28:59.175Z"
}

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Fine for prototyping, but adds a scaling tech debt "time bomb" for a live system. Those associations had better be really sparse.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

There's certainly the danger of creating too many ad-hoc or sparse relationships, which can cause issues. That said, when used for supplementing foreign keys, Tie-in can be a useful tool in a production system as well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Don't you want a graph database at this point?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

That idea crossed my mind too, but you can’t really use the full capabilities of SQL in graph databases, and that’s a deal breaker for me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

i was thinking the same thing