Changes to more broadly support auto-increment. new odbc-postgresql-database type

[clsql.git] / doc / ref-ooddl.xml

diff --git a/doc/ref-ooddl.xml b/doc/ref-ooddl.xml
index 03ab9aafafc5b2b6e93ea16c67b98cb749b76b1c..4a2cffa140b4600703290805f4e6352301b5af1d 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/ref-ooddl.xml
+++ b/doc/ref-ooddl.xml
@@ -594,7 +594,11 @@
           Defaults to nil, i.e. non-normalized schemas. When true,
           SQL database tables that map to this class and parent
           classes are joined on their primary keys to get the full
-          set of database columns for this class.
+          set of database columns for this class.  This means that 
+          the primary key of the base class will be copied to all 
+          subclasses as we insert so that all parent classes of an 
+          instance will have the same value in their primary key slots
+          (see tests/ds-nodes.lisp and oodml.lisp)
            </para>
          </listitem>
        </itemizedlist>
@@ -717,6 +721,25 @@ CLSQL> (title test-user)
 CLSQL> (nick test-user)
 "test-user"
       </screen>
+      <para>
+        Notes from a refactor of this code.
+
+        There are many assumptions that need to be met for normalized classes to work
+
+        * The each of the classes should have its own single key column (of a different name)
+          that will contain an identical value.  EG: node has a node-id, setting which
+          is a node has a node-id and a setting-id which must be equal.  You cannot use
+          node-id as the primary key on both tables (as I would have expected).  The exception
+          to this seems to be if your class has no slots at all, then you dont need to have a
+          single key column, because your class is fully represented in the db by its parent(s)
+
+        * more than one parent class per normalized class should be considered experimental
+          and untested (vaya con Dios)
+
+        * There are a few code paths that just dont pay any attention to normalized classes
+          eg: delete-records-for-instance
+
+      </para>
       </refsect2>
     </refsect1>
     <refsect1>