Why can’t we have, with the corresponding DBMS functionality, a DDL statment of the type like:
ALTER TABLE
ADD FOREIGN KEY ( [,])
SUBTYPE OF ( [,])
ON = ;
where a new keyword, SUBTYPE OF … ON, replaces the keyword REFERENCES.
The last column name is in the 2nd named table. The constraint rule would always be an implicit ON [PARENT] DELETE CASCADE.

This would be better than the current R.I. constraint plus R.I. trigger set, which is 100% effective only when combined.

François

I’m really not interested in your general rants, falsely asserting I haven’t answered your question. Why don’t you instead go comment on the answers I’ve provided, and explain why you think they’re inadequate?

Maybe you could start with http://www.dbms2.com/2005/12/09/relational-dbms-versus-text-data/

McKay Salisbury

Maybe this is
the wrong
place to be
discussing
this (and
especially at
this
resolution of
mine.) But
I’m very
curious what
you mean by
“first-normal
form”. Darwen
makes a great
argument for
databases
that you
would claim
aren’t first-
normal form
being first-
normal form.

But yes, the
definition
has changed
quite a bit
over the
years.

McKay
Salisbury

P.S. The fact
that the text
is inputted
in a fixed-
width font
and the text
is viewed in
a variable-
width font
means that
even if I
try to stay
consistent in
my column
widths, I am
unable to
preserve that
spacing in
the resulting
text.

Sure you can say that I should put
in line feeds myself, but, as you
can see, this then removes control
from the viewer. Virtually all
modern web browsers have a word-wrap
feature. In most web pages, if one
wants to have text lines bigger,
they can make the window bigger. But
if the person who created the text
put his own line feeds in, the
reader has no more control.

McKay

My sense is that Date and Pascal would now say first-normal form is utterly
required for something to be relational.

Date freely concedes that definitions and understanding have evolved over the
years, but that seems to be the current, emphatic position.

That’s indeed what I was referring to.

CAM

I’m not aware of a “nasty bug” in the commenting technology.

A “nasty bug” might be one that lost every 20th word in a comment.

What we have here is a UI weakness that makes it desirable for your to hit
your own line breaks rather than rely on the software to do it for you.

I.e., all we have is the absence of a desirable feature.

I tolerate it because other software at the same price which has this
feature unfortunately lacks other features that I regard as more important.

That said, if you indeed are suffering data loss from some aspect of the UI,
please let me know and I’ll take action accordingly.

In any case, I want to come to a greater understanding of where your and my opinions differ, but you’ve written in such vague terms, that I’m not understanding, and I’m forced to take stabs in the dark like this.

McKay Salisbury

P.S. I hate to mention this, because when I do, it seems as if you get sidetracked and neglect (or don’t fully expound on) other issues I bring up, but and with regard to your commenting about my comments about Wordpress, I have no desire to contact the makers of this theme you’re using. It shouldn’t be my concern that your webpage has this nasty bug in it. It should be yours. Your problem is is that you use this “purchased software” or “legacy systems”. And you’re having trouble yourself controlling your system. My criticism of you pinning this blame on others, is the same as your criticism of me saying the relational model can’t handle this, except that the relational model wasn’t designed to integrate legacy systems with purchased software, it was designed to provide an easier access at the data.