Why is a primary-foreign key relation required when we can join without it?

Question

If we can get data from two tables without having primary and foreign key relation, then why we need this rule? Can you please explain me clearly, with suitable example? It\

Answer 1

I know its late to post, but I use the site for my own reference and so I wanted to put an answer here for myself to reference in the future too. I hope you (and others) find it helpful.

Lets pretend a bunch of super Einstein experts designed our database. Our super perfect database has 3 tables, and the following relationships defined between them:

TblA 1:M TblB
TblB 1:M TblC

Notice there is no relationship between TblA and TblC

In most scenarios such a simple database is easy to navigate but in commercial databases it is usually impossible to be able to tell at the design stage all the possible uses and combination of uses for data, tables, and even whole databases, especially as systems get built upon and other systems get integrated or switched around or out. This simple fact has spawned a whole industry built on top of databases called Business Intelligence. But I digress...

In the above case, the structure is so simple to understand that its easy to see you can join from TblA, through to B, and through to C and vice versa to get at what you need. It also very vaguely highlights some of the problems with doing it. Now expand this simple chain to 10 or 20 or 50 relationships long. Now all of a sudden you start to envision a need for exactly your scenario. In simple terms, a join from A to C or vice versa or A to F or B to Z or whatever as our system grows.

There are many ways this can indeed be done. The one mentioned above being the most popular, that is driving through all the links. The major problem is that its very slow. And gets progressively slower the more tables you add to the chain, the more those tables grow, and the further you want to go through it.

Solution 1: Look for a common link. It must be there if you taught of a reason to join A to C. If it is not obvious, create a relationship and then join on it. i.e. To join A through B through C there must be some commonality or your join would either produce zero results or a massive number or results (Cartesian product). If you know this commonality, simply add the needed columns to A and C and link them directly.

The rule for relationships is that they simply must have a reason to exist. Nothing more. If you can find a good reason to link from A to C then do it. But you must ensure your reason is not redundant (i.e. its already handled in some other way).

Now a word of warning. There are some pitfalls. But I don't do a good job of explaining them so I will refer you to my source instead of talking about it here. But remember, this is getting into some heavy stuff, so this video about fan and chasm traps is really only a starting point. You can join without relationships. But I advise watching this video first as this goes beyond what most people learn in college and well into the territory of the BI and SAP guys. These guys, while they can program, their day job is to specialise in exactly this kind of thing. How to get massive amounts of data to talk to each other and make sense.

This video is one of the better videos I have come across on the subject. And it's worth looking over some of his other videos. I learned a lot from him.