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<p>Both features reside only in the client side, of course.<br>
</p>
<p>A virtual column allows to permanently show, in a table, a column
calculated from a JavaScript-alike expression. That expression is
based on other columns of the table and offers several
mathematical functions. I know that you can do the same with a
view, which is much more powerful, but doing this in the
client-side has some advantages in certain situations:</p>
<ol>
<li>If you have not permission to create a view.<br>
<br>
</li>
<li>If you have permission, but don't want to clutter the schema.
So it's not invasive to other users.<br>
<br>
</li>
<li>You can use this column to color the rows by a given criteria.<br>
<br>
</li>
<li>Maybe the most important: since you're viewing a table and not
a view, you can still edit the records from the GUI, as usual.<br>
</li>
</ol>
Virtual foreign keys, on the other hand, didn't seem interesting to
me... Until I had to work with a database from Microsoft Navision in
SQL Server. Navision don't use foreign keys at the database level.
So, in order to figure out the relationships among tables, I had to
add virtual FKs. That way, I had a permanent visual aid. That
feature, combined with the auto-diagrams generated by DBeaver,
allowed me to understand part of that mess. It was my salvation.<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 01/04/2020 22:28, Thomas Kellerer
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:91dd694b-c19f-df70-d155-36374790499d(at)gmx(dot)net">negora
schrieb am 01.04.2020 um 21:44:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">It has lots of useful features, such as
good query completion, row
<br>
coloring, virtual columns, virtual foreign keys
<br>
</blockquote>
What kind of feature is "virtual foreign keys"?
<br>
<br>
Or "virtual columns" in the context of a SQL GUI tool
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
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