Auto propagating the parent PK column(s) to the child table when establishing relationships between 2 tables

by Nov 4, 2013

Am evaluating Aqua Data Studio 14 and have a question about Relationship configuration.

When I assign a 1:M relationship between 2 tables, I would expect the PK column(s) in the parent table to become a FK in the child table by either

matching to a column(s) of the same name/datatype in the child table
auto-creating the column(s) in the child table.
However, when I choose the “One to Many” relationship on the Palette and click on the Parent table then the Child table to establish the linkage, I’m prompted to select the matching columns on both sides of the relationship in the Relationship Properties window. Is there a way for the tool to do this matching automatically? Otherwise the tool seems to allow invalid relationships to potentially be created, e.g. I was able to create a 1:M between a table having a “timestamp” PK whose matched column in the child table column is a “bigint” which is an invalid construct. I would prefer having the tool enforce the rules (and then allow me to alter the column name on the child side if I wanted a different column name on the child table).

Thank you.

Response

Tariq Rahiman over 9 years ago
For the main relationship configuration, we have left it to the discretion of the end user to pick the correct keys in the tables to make the ER Modeler more flexible to the end user and not to enforce strict validations. Your suggestion had come up during the development of the ER Modeler, but we decided to drop the requirement to make the ER Modeler more flexible. See the below issue logged in AquaClusters:
https://www.aquaclusters.com/app/home/project/public/aquadatastudio/issue/1291

However we have made the change available to “Sub Category” Relationship. You can see that the PF-FK is automatically propagated for this type. In the attached ER Model, click on the Relationship line and take the relationship properties. Now if you add any key from the parent table you can see that ER Modeler automatically adds the Foreign Key in the Child Table.