database relationships

Question

does setting up proper relationships in a database help with anything else other than data integrity?

do they improve or hinder performance?

Answer 1

Do relationships in databases improve or hinder performance?

Like any tool in your toolbox, the results you'll get depend on how you use it. Properly specified relationships and a well-designed logical database can be an enormous boon to performance -- consider the difference between searching through normalized and denormalized data, for example.