If you use foreign key constraints you can't dump and restore tables unless you do so in a very specific order. It's very easy to do ``allowed'' circular definitions that make the tables impossible to ...

Hence, the birth of the MySQL InnoDB vs. MyISAM debate. Of course, MySQL users prior to the 5.5 release were probably perplexed by the assertion that the database didn't support foreign keys. MySQL ...

Can you do a foreign key within a single table, though? I've only ever seen foreign key constraints tying a field in one table to a field in another table.