PS....

the original post re parents and kids is a different thing - kids still exist if the parent dies :[

The design here *must* be one to many not parent child

Peter

Hi Dan, Otto and Kyle

I disagree !!!

If you think about real world examples - eg invoice header and invoice lines

for me it makes no sense for invoice lines to exist without a header - I would want the db to enforce this as it does with parent child relationship

Agreed that the global buffers will have to load more data - but then again it's most likely that you want to see the lines whenever you see the header,

But I do agree with Otto re bitmap indices - but it has to be some huge database for this to impact on performance and if you are in this sort of size that it makes a diff then it's a different problem entirely and requires some deep thought re the design

Peter