Re: abuse of inheritance?

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Alex Rice wrote:

> Should I be using table inheritance in this scenario?
>
> Table "contact" has name, address, phone, email, etc. columns.
> Table "staff" inherits from "contact because it has many columns in
> common with "contact".

So I'm ok with relational theory, I think, and I know OO pretty
well, at least from a programmer's viewpoint.

But I'm unsure about this table inheritance thing. What is the advantage
of using inheritance over having a staff table with the staff columns
and a FK into the contact table? What are the disadvantages? Can anyone
point to some literature on this?

cjs
--
Curt Sampson  <cjs@cynic.net>   +81 90 7737 2974   http://www.netbsd.org
    Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light.  --XTC