[petalmind]

> The fact that there are situations when implementing referential integrity is difficult does not mean you shouldn’t do it at all.

> Referential integrity is specified at the logical level and does not dictate any particular implementation. OTOH violating 1NF makes it impossible to even specify RI constraints.

Now we're bargaining. If referential integrity does not dictate any particular implementation, then having an application-level RI and no database-level constrains should also be acceptable. Yet this is not a common FK enthusiasts position.

We just had a discussion of DSQL where a lot of people were saying things like "no FKs thus no real database". Well, I dunno.