TSQL foreign keys on views?

Question

I have a SQL-Server 2008 database and a schema which uses foreign key constraints to enforce referential integrity. Works as intended. Now the user creates views on the orig

Answer 1

From a purely data integrity perspective (and nothing to do with the Query Optimizer), I had considered an Indexed View. I figured you could make a unique index on it, which could be broken when you try to have broken integrity in your underlying tables.

But... I don't think you can get around the restrictions of indexed views well enough.

For example:

You can't use outer joins, or sub-queries. That makes it very hard to find the rows that don't exist in the view. If you use aggregates, you can't use HAVING, so that cuts out some options you could use there too. You can't even have constants in an indexed view if you have grouping (whether or not you use a GROUP BY clause), so you can't even try putting an index on a constant field so that a second row will fall over. You can't use UNION ALL, so the idea of having a count which will break a unique index when it hits a second zero won't work.

I feel like there should be an answer, but I'm afraid you're going to have to take a good look at your actual design and work out what you really need. Perhaps triggers (and good indexes) on the tables involved, so that any changes that might break something can roll it all that.

But I was really hoping to be able to suggest something that the Query Optimizer might be able to leverage to help the performance of your system, but I don't think I can.