Re: FOREIGN KEYS vs PERFORMANCE

On Apr 12, 2006, at 4:13 , Rodrigo Sakai wrote:

>   I think this is an old question, but I want to know if it really  
> is well worth to not create some foreign keys an deal with the  
> referential integrity at application-level?????

If I had to choose between one or the other, I'd leave all  
referential integrity in the database and deal with the errors thrown  
when referential integrity is violated in the application. PostgreSQL  
is designed to handle these kinds of issues. Anything you code in  
your application is more likely to contain bugs or miss corner cases  
that would allow referential integrity to be violated. PostgreSQL has  
been pounded on for years by a great many users and developers,  
making the likelihood of bugs still remaining much smaller.

Of course, you can add some referential integrity checks in your  
application code, but those should be in addition to your database- 
level checks.

Michael Glaesemann
grzm myrealbox com