Multiple keys table

probablly a newbie question:
Rails does not support a table with multiple keys ???
it seems that the ActiveRecord set_primary_key method can only set the
column name… (hope i’m wrong there)

example:
table A - P.K id, string name
table B - P.K id, string name
table C - P.K a_id and b_id, both are also foreign keys.

Thanks,
Amir.

amir lidor wrote:

probablly a newbie question:
Rails does not support a table with multiple keys ???
it seems that the ActiveRecord set_primary_key method can only set the
column name… (hope i’m wrong there)

Sorry to be the carrier of bad news, but you are correct as far as I
know.

amir lidor wrote:

probablly a newbie question:
Rails does not support a table with multiple keys ???
it seems that the ActiveRecord set_primary_key method can only set the
column name… (hope i’m wrong there)

example:
table A - P.K id, string name
table B - P.K id, string name
table C - P.K a_id and b_id, both are also foreign keys.

What is the relationship between tables A and B ?
One to many, many to one, many to many ?
I just wondered if your normalization was correct…
_tony

Anthony G. wrote:

amir lidor wrote:

probablly a newbie question:
Rails does not support a table with multiple keys ???
it seems that the ActiveRecord set_primary_key method can only set the
column name… (hope i’m wrong there)

example:
table A - P.K id, string name
table B - P.K id, string name
table C - P.K a_id and b_id, both are also foreign keys.

What is the relationship between tables A and B ?
One to many, many to one, many to many ?
I just wondered if your normalization was correct…
_tony

The relation is many to many.
I talked with a friend though and he explained me that it’s really bad
to use multiple-keys tables, and that if i assign another primary key
column, even if there will be multiple identical (value-wise of the a_id
and b_id columns) rows, RoR will ignore them when performing Joins.
so i understand what should i do, I am just left with the question (out
of curiosity) about Rails supporting multiple-keys tables…

Thanks,
Amir.

On Mar 1, 2006, at 1:57 AM, amir lidor wrote:

table B - P.K id, string name
column, even if there will be multiple identical (value-wise of the
a_id
and b_id columns) rows, RoR will ignore them when performing Joins.
so i understand what should i do, I am just left with the question
(out
of curiosity) about Rails supporting multiple-keys tables…

Thanks,
Amir.

It sounds like you want a composite primary key, i.e. the combination
of (a_id, b_id) form the primary key for table C.
No, this is not supported in Rails. Such practice has fallen out of
favor in recent years, and some database servers do not even support
it. There is still much debate, but Rails has taken the position of
rejecting composite primary keys.

-Derrick S.