When using `relationMode="prisma"` (or MongoDB), provide an escape hatch to remove emulated checks from `onUpdate` and `onDelete`

Problem

We have a preview feature called referentialIntegrity It allows users to set the datasource property relationMode to "prisma" or "foreignKeys" When relationMode="prisma"

• Prisma Client emulates the behavior of the referential actions, onUpdate, onDelete based on the behavior observed in SQL databases that use Foreign Keys.
• Prisma Migrate does not create Foreign Keys,

For MongoDB provider, relationMode="prisma" is the default and cannot be changed, it makes it easier to work with relations.

In some cases, people maybe want to have an alternative to this emulated behavior of Prisma Client

• In MongoDB world this is a new behavior
  • some people might prefer handling relations on their own
    • which I think make sense if the MongoDB database is accessed by another ORM/Client (which does not have the same behavior).
  • some people might find it slower because of additional queries

Suggested solution

Option 1 relationMode="none"

• Valid for all databases
• It would be a global setting where all referential actions would be invalid and show a schema validation error.
• The behavior would be that the default onUpdate, onDelete does “nothing”, no checks would be performed, which means that you could break the Referential Integrity of your data. (The referenced entity might not exist)

Option 2 onUpdate="Nothing" / onDelete="Nothing"

• Valid for all databases
• Only valid if relationMode="prisma"
• It would be a Prisma “referential action” that only exist for Prisma
• The behavior would be that onUpdate, onDelete does “nothing”, no checks would be performed, which means that you could break the Referential Integrity of your data. (The referenced entity might not exist)

[davesteinberg]

@janpio Yup, I just meant to reaffirm the need and agree that I see the connection to this. Sorry for the noise.

[Songkeys]

Are you ok with your data getting invalid and you having orphan entries after? What is your motivation not to prevent such actions or removing the invalid valid after? (Just trying to understand)

For example, I have user and post tables. A user will post many posts. But there might be some case where a post is coming to the database while its owner hasn’t been inserted into. Because the data was scrape from the internet, blockchain, random other places. I have no control or idea what data would come or lose first actually. So when inserting, updating, deleting, I need to only update the row itself, not to influence other tables. But when query, they do have relations, which needs the usage of relationMode=“prisma”.

I think this scene is pretty common? Orphan entries are totally acceptable. ORM doesn’t need to assume that we must update or delete the related table’s row if one row is changed.