Also, even if there was a good reason for that strange database scheme, they could have simply specified "ON UPDATE CASCADE" on their foreign references, and th

Also, even if there was a good reason for that strange database scheme, they could have simply specified "ON UPDATE CASCADE" on their foreign references, and the database would have taken care of the nasty details. That's what databases are good at. (Or did their ORM prevent them from doing so?) So this is more an example of "How to make simple tasks difficult" rather than "Even simple tasks have their pitfalls".