That problem has nothing to do with primary keys, foreign keys, or anything of the sort. That error has to do with how modern RDBMSes handle outer joins. Basically, it goes like this:
  1. You construct your query. 
     from A
 left outer join B on (a.foo = b.foo)
 left outer join C on (b.bar = c.bar)

    [download]
  2. The query analyzer now tries to determine what order to join the tables to form the intermediate set that it will then limit on. (It's more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea.)
  3. Let's say it tries to join B and C first. It does that, forming a set with all the items from B and items from C that match. Then it joins that to A. But, what items should be in C for those items in A that aren't in B? You run into the same problem if you join A to B first, then join that to C.

I guarantee that if you do this with all your tables having primary keys, that won't make a difference. If all your tables have foreign keys, then you're sidestepping the issue because the OUTER keyword won't mean anything.

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In reply to Re^4: OT: benefits of database normalization by dragonchild
in thread OT: benefits of database normalization by revdiablo

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