Wednesday Word: June 23, 2010

Wednesday Word is an OCDQ regular segment intended to provide an occasional alternative to my Wordless Wednesday posts. Wednesday Word provides a word (or words) of the day, including both my definition and an example of recommended usage.

Referential Narcissisity

Definition – When referential integrity is enforced, a relational database table’s foreign key columns must only contain data values from their parent table’s primary key column, but referential narcissisity occurs when a table’s foreign key columns refuse to acknowledge data values from their alleged parent table—especially when the parent table was created by another DBA.

Example – The following scene is set on the eighth floor of the Nemesis Corporation, where within the vast cubicle farm of the data architecture group, Bob, a Business Analyst struggling with an ad hoc report, seeks the assistance of Doug, a Senior DBA.

Bob: “Excuse me, Doug. I don’t mean to bother you, I know you are a very busy and important man, but I am trying to join the Sales Transaction table to the Customer Master table using Customer Key, and my queries always return zero rows.”

Doug: “That is because although Doug created the Sales Transaction table, the Customer Master table was created by Craig. Doug’s tables do not acknowledge any foreign key relationships with Craig’s tables. Doug is superior to Craig in every way. Doug’s Kung Fu is the best—and until Craig publicly acknowledges this, your joins will not return any rows.”

Bob: “Uh, why do you keep referring to yourself in the third person?”

Doug: “Doug is bored with this conversation now. Be gone from my sight, lowly business analyst. You should be happy that Doug even acknowledged your presence at all.”

Wednesday Word: June 9, 2010 – C.O.E.R.C.E.

Wednesday Word: April 28, 2010 – Antidisillusionmentarianism

Wednesday Word: April 21, 2010 – Enterpricification

Wednesday Word: April 7, 2010 – Vendor Asskisstic