RULE-BASED JOINING OF FOREIGN TO PRIMARY KEY

摘要

Linking of a child table to a parent table in a database system. For a given parent table row, an expression associated with the particular row is identified. The expression may be a semantic expression that comprises something different than or more than an equals expression or a contains expression. The expression might also take as input a field of the parent table other than the primary key of the parent table. For each of multiple (and potentially all) rows of a child table, the expression is evaluated against a foreign key of the corresponding row of the child table. If the foreign key matches the expression, an association is created, and perhaps saved, between the foreign key and the particular row of the parent table. The expressions may differ even down to the granularity of a single row in the parent table, thereby enabling perhaps custom per-row expressions.

主权项

1. A computer program product comprising one or more computer-readable storage media having thereon computer-executable instructions that are structured such that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing system, cause the computing system to perform a method for linking a child table to a parent table in a database system using a foreign key in the child table, the method comprising:
an act of identifying a semantic expression associated with a particular row of a parent table; for each of a plurality of rows of a child table, an act of performing the following:
an act of evaluating the semantic expression against a foreign key of the corresponding row of the child table; andif the foreign key of the corresponding row of the child table matches the semantic expression based on the act of evaluating, an act of creating an association between the foreign key and the particular row of the parent table.