Bogus foreign key constraint fail

Question

I get this error message:

ERROR 1217 (23000) at line 40: Cannot delete or update a parent row: a foreign key constraint fails

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Answer 1

On demand, now as an answer...

When using MySQL Query Browser or phpMyAdmin, it appears that a new connection is opened for each query (bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=8280), making it neccessary to write all the drop statements in one query, eg.

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0; 
DROP TABLE my_first_table_to_drop; 
DROP TABLE my_second_table_to_drop; 
SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1; 

Where the SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1 serves as an extra security measure...