[Phpmyadmin-devel] On relation table field names

[Marc Delisle]

Jay Davis wrote:

> Hello:
> 
> Despite field name changes for the relation table fields in 2.3.0, the
> relation table field names still seem to be misnamed.

If we take the example "an invoice has many items", it would be clearer 
to say that the invoice is the *master* table, and items is the *detail* 
table. A simplified example:

CREATE TABLE invoice (
	invoice_id tinyint(4) NOT NULL auto_increment,
	invoice_date date,
	PRIMARY KEY (invoice_id))

CREATE TABLE items (
	invoice_id tinyint(4),
	item_number tinyint(4),
	description varchar(100),
	PRIMARY KEY (invoice_id, item_number))

---------------------------------------------

If we take the example in Documentation.html:

CREATE TABLE persons (
        id tinyint(4) NOT NULL auto_increment,
        person_name varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
        town_code varchar(5) default '0',
        country_code char(1) NOT NULL default '',
        PRIMARY KEY (id)
      ) TYPE=MyISAM;

CREATE TABLE towns (
        town_code varchar(5) NOT NULL default '0',
        description varchar(30) NOT NULL default '',
        PRIMARY KEY (town_code)
      ) TYPE=MyISAM;

CREATE TABLE countries (
        country_code char(1) NOT NULL default '',
        description varchar(10) NOT NULL default '',
        PRIMARY KEY (country_code)
      ) TYPE=MyISAM;

We can think of the table persons as the master table, because we put 
the emphasis on the person.  Then, the town_code in persons is a foreign 
key linking to table towns, where town_code is the primary key. But in this
case, can we talk about master/detail relationship?

So it's not easy to have only one way to describe various cases, but I think that

the field names in our relation table are clear enough.

-- 
Marc Delisle