[function_seven]

Back in the day I was forced to ditch FKs in my MySQL application, because I needed a FULLTEXT index on one of my columns, and MySQL only supported that type of index on MyISAM tables (this was on 5.x or something). MyISAM didn't do foreign keys.

It was a pretty central table, and the inability to use FKs there kinda spread outward.

[edmundsauto]

Did you consider making a 1-1 relationship on a new table that only had the FULLTEXT column? Curious how you evaluated the trade offs

[function_seven]

I can't remember how much time I spent thinking about it, but if I were to reenact my state of mind at the time, I probably concluded something like, "Without transactions, I'll have to write more code to make sure the ID in both tables stays in sync, and I'll have to send 2 separate INSERTs (sequentially) for every record added, and if the first one fails, I need to handle that, and if the 2nd one fails, I need to handle that differently, and... fuck it. I'll just promise to be good and not use FKs"

Or something. I can't remember the details, but I was (and still am) very averse to complexity in my application code.