Propagate Key from Parent to Child Table — propagate_natural

Copies a key column from a parent table to a child table by joining on a common column (typically UUID). This is used to populate foreign key columns before assigning sequential IDs with deterministic sort order.

Usage

propagate_natural_key(
  con,
  child_tbl,
  parent_tbl,
  key_col,
  join_col,
  key_type = NULL
)

Arguments

con: DuckDB connection
child_tbl: Name of child table to update
parent_tbl: Name of parent table containing the key
key_col: Name of the key column to propagate (e.g., "cruise_key", "site_id")
join_col: Name of the column to join on (must exist in both tables)
key_type: SQL data type for the key ("TEXT" or "INTEGER", default: auto-detect from parent)

Value

Invisibly returns the connection after adding and populating key column

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# propagate cruise_key (TEXT) to site table
propagate_natural_key(
  con        = con,
  child_tbl  = "site",
  parent_tbl = "cruise",
  key_col    = "cruise_key",
  join_col   = "cruise_uuid")

# propagate site_id (INTEGER) to tow table
propagate_natural_key(
  con        = con,
  child_tbl  = "tow",
  parent_tbl = "site",
  key_col    = "site_id",
  join_col   = "site_uuid")
} # }