Virtual Foreign Keys

Hi

We have a section of database that for housekeeping and performance reasons doesn’t actually have foreign key constraints between the tables.

I’ve reverse-engineered the model from our database, and for the purposes of our schema diagrams put in foreign keys that don’t really exist on the database to represent the relationships between the tables.

The problem is that when I use the model update to update our diagrams it picks out these keys every time and I have to manually untick them to make sure they don’t get deleted.

Does anyone know if there is any way I can make Toad Data Modeler treat these as ‘virtual’ foreign keys that should be ignored when I use Model Update? At the moment the closest thing I can see is to draw a Line between the two tables, but that doesn’t have the all-important crows feet.

Thanks for any advice

Dan

Hi,

I apologize for the delayed response. The only workaround that may help is the following:

  • Open your model and generate SQL without relationships (F9, tab What to generate, uncheck the Relationships check box)
  • Reverse engineer the generated SQL code, new model will be created (without relationships)
  • Compare the newly created model with your database to find out differences.

In general, lines with crows feet signs cannot be created because it would be difficult to recognize real relationship line and graphical lines and you would also have to think about updating the graphical signs every time you change mandatory/cardinality/relationship type settings etc…

Regards,

Vaclav

Thanks - but it doesn’t matter now. I was evaluating the product to see if it was for us and we wound up going for a different one.