Synopsis: Keyless Entry

The testing lab manager burst into my cubicle, “Bill, it looks like two managers have reserved the same server in our lab for the same days — how could this happen? Can you take a look into this and get it fixed? They’re screaming at me that they both need the equipment and that I’m holding up their project schedule.”

I designed an equipment-tracking application some years ago using MySQL. The default storage engine for MySQL was MyISAM, which doesn’t support foreign key constraints. The database had many logical relationships but could not enforce referential integrity.