Thank you  I had to figure out how this whole thing works (and to search lots of sites to get the general idea) so decided it would be nice to share the basics with others as well.

Will this do, to have both delete and update:

CREATE TABLE nodes2 (
        name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL, 
        parent VARCHAR(50), 
        PRIMARY KEY (name), 
        FOREIGN KEY(parent) REFERENCES nodes (name) ON UPDATE cascade on DELETE cascade
)

Yes, that's what I did (because, obviously, the class being abstract is not the cause - works great in other scenarios):

Class Test.NewClass Extends %Persistent [ Abstract, NoExtent ]
{}

Class Test.NewClass1 Extends Test.NewClass
{}

I do know you don't inherit all from the secondary class, but I though the number of things I do inherit was more than just parameters, properties and methods. I take it queries, foreign keys, triggers, projections are out as well?