SQL Power Software Forum

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2008-07-09 21:40:42

the table profile function in the architect is nice and useful, sometime I use that for finding out table primary key or unique key in unknown databases, but in many cases, table has compound PK or UK, I suggest that add a feature to find the compound key of a table if the simple table profile result does not provide it, this feature list all the column combinations that the values are unique.

Yeah, that would be really useful indeed.

I'll make you a deal: If you can find us a paper or textbook with a (non-patented) algorithm for efficiently finding all the candidate key combinations in a table, we'll implement it right away!

-Jonathan

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2008-07-10 14:31:08

Could not find anything on the internet by a quick search. but here is an idea:
How about a small contest to design the algorithm, in sqlpower or in this forum. then we create a framework and implement all ideas into standalone small programs, test them all on a live/production database, then the best performance decides the winner. Isn't that fun?

Sure, we can call it a contest. We will definitely add it to the Architect if someone figures out a good algorithm.

But I bet there's something out there already. You just have to know what to look for. There's probably a technical term for it, like "autocorrelation" or something. I don't think that's the right word, but there probably is a word.

-Jonathan