Benefiting from the Relational System - Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.4 for Effective MySQL Management - page 186

We can also set some actions with the ON DELETE and ON UPDATE options. For
example, ON DELETE CASCADE would make MySQL automatically delete all the
rows in the related (foreign) table when the corresponding row is deleted from the
parent table. This would be useful, for example, when the parent table is invoices ,
and the foreign table is invoice-items . These options are supported natively by
MySQL, so deleting outside of phpMyAdmin would cause the delete cascade.
If we have not done so already, we should define the display
column for the author table, as explained in the Deining the
display column section.
Foreign keys without phpMyAdmin configuration
storage
We see the Relation view link on the Structure page of an InnoDB or PBXT table,
even when the configuration storage is not installed. This would bring us to a screen
where we could define the foreign keys, in this case for the book table.
Note that, if we choose this, the display column for the linked table (in this case
author ) cannot be defined, as it belongs to phpMyAdmin's configuration storage.
Thus, we would lose the benefit of seeing the associated description of the foreign key.
Defining relations with the Designer
The Ajax-based Designer offers a visually-driven way of managing relations (both
internal and foreign key-based), and defining the display column for each table. It
can also act as:
• A menu to access the structure of existing tables and to access the table
creation page
• A PDF schema manager, if we want a PDF schema encompassing all
our tables
On the Designer workspace, we can work on the relations for all tables on the same
panel. On the other hand, the Relation view shows the relations for only a single
table at a time.
We access this feature from the Database view by clicking on the Designer
menu tab.