Top "Rdbms-agnostic" questions

For SQL related questions that is not targeted for a specific database product.

Why historically do people use 255 not 256 for database field magnitudes?

You often see database fields set to have a magnitude of 255 characters, what is the traditional / historic reason why? I …

sql rdbms-agnostic
What are views good for?

I'm just trying to get a general idea of what views are used for in RDBMSes. That is to say, …

sql view rdbms-agnostic
What is the problem with foreign key cascade multiple paths and cycles?

In SQL Server 2005 I just struck the infamous error message: Introducing FOREIGN KEY constraint XXX on table YYY may cause …

sql foreign-keys cascade rdbms-agnostic