Delete parent record... ???

Question

Good morning. In a relationship there is table A(parents) and table B (childs) .

Since my beginnings in quickbase I have question...

¿Why does quickbase allow you to delete records from table A regardless of whether it has a related child in table B?

Marcelo Benavides Torres

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Marcelo Benavides
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jimharrison · Answer

I would say this is a good question and a problem most Quickbase Admins/builders eventually face. There are no "before you start building there are a few things you should know" articles I am aware of that warn us to remove delete rights. This is one of those problems everyone will face and then come to their own conclusions on how to make it work. This design is an open architecture and preferred.

It is nice to have the open design. It is not so nice to come in to work and find out that yesterday you deleted all the parents and now no one can see the children and now you have to put it all back etc. etc. this is not fun but a great way to never forget.

One last note, Quickbase does have a restore feature, so one can put it back to the previous nights backup. That is the extent of the granularity to restore. There are no transaction logs one can replay.

While you're paying attention, another thing to be aware of, once a record is deleted, you cannot ever get that record id back other than by a table restore. So if your record id is number 123 and you deleted it from the table, you will see record id 122 and then 124. This subtle distinction becomes very important when working with related fields.

Good luck Marcelo, good observation!

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Jim Harrison
transparency = knowledge + understanding : The Scrum Dudes
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markshnier__you · Answer

It's not really a valid question to ask. It is just not an automatic capability that is part of the product features at this time.

You can either use the feedback process to suggest an enhancement or post a question as to how you can adapt to this situation if you are looking to prevent allowing regular users deleting a Parent record when it has children.

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Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
mark.shnier@gmail.com
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marcelobenavide · Answer

Good morning Mr. Shnier.

I think this is a valid question, in my 24 years of experience (software developer) it is the first software I know of that allows you to delete parent records from an entity relationship schema.

About looking for mechanisms to avoid this: I already did it, remove the options to delete all users and with URL - buttons and formulas I can control this situation (show or not a delete button for each record).

Having the capabilities to do what I've just mentioned I don't think will diminish or validate my question.

Thank you

Marcelo Benavides Torres

markshnier__you · Answer

Sorry, I was not trying to say that this would not be a useful feature. I'm just saying that given that this forum is mainly used for a peer to peer help each other type forum, the knowledge of why or why not a feature was build 20 years ago when Quickbase was invented is hard for us to answer.

In my case I block delete for all regular non admin users. Then a provide a checkbox to request deletion and have a Pipeline do the delete if there are no children.

The other reason not to automatically block deleting a parent if there are children, is that there are use cases where the desired outcome is to delete the parent and its children automatically so as not to leave Orphans. This can also be done with a Pipeline

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Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
mark.shnier@gmail.com
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marcelobenavide · Answer

Thanks Mr. Shnier, Just now I understand your comment, this is not the appropriate forum for that question. Thank you!Marcelo Beanvides Torres

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Delete parent record... ???