[AccessD] Estimating Help

I suppose an exception can always be found to justify doing something.

Rather than making it the default, I personally would build a set of queries
that allow deleting the child records from the bottom up and run the queries
when needed, only allowing those authorized users to do so.  Something of
that nature.

If there are no other users than those doing these deletes, that is another
story.  But if you are exposing these records to deletion by others that
shouldn't have this power I would be thinking twice about my solution.

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-admin at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-admin at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of John Bartow
Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2003 4:20 PM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: RE: [AccessD] Estimating Help


JC, Arthur,
I'm surprised at that statement coming from you two gurus! Cascade delete
can be a wonderful thing!

I have just run across an instance where it was so wonderful as to result in
smiles all around. All of the detail information of a particular operation
that is no longer needed can be deleted without fuss. Delete the main record
and boom! All clean. Had the case where a data migration brought in data
that was of dubious quality (approx. 10,000 rows in the primary table). The
only people who could determine the quality of the data were the technical
specialist working with it. The manager wated to just delete them all and
make them re-enter the data by hand. This would take little time to delete
but days/months to re-enter. When I brought up that fact that the techs
could delete an entire record and its details in maybe 1 second it changed
the story consideably. Now the choice becomes:
1 delete it all and re-enter everything
2 verify the data and delete if worthless, edit if needed and avoid
re-entering possibly hundreds or thousands of records.

Tough choice! Especially considering it will cost them less to do the former
because I don't have to create a special routine to do it.

Of course this action is proceeded by double warnings and such so that even
those authorized to do it must suffer the consequences of relentless
questioning before proceeding ;o)

I'm sure there are DBs where nothing ever gets deleted but I haven't run
into one yet. (I don't use it on clients - those are marked as inactive and
re-appear in the case that a new client is being added with similar info.)

John B.

[mailto:accessd-admin at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller

I didn't mean that the rows were disappearing, but rather that they
disappeared from reports, since their FK referents were gone. I would never
be so foolish as to turn cascade-delete on anywhere in any serious database
:-) I restored an old copy with the deleted employees, then imported the
rows and restored sanity to the db.


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