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I have a database of components. Each component is of a specific type. That means there is a many-to-one relationship between a component and a type. When I delete a type, I would like to delete all the components which has a foreign key of that type. But if I'm not mistaken, cascade delete will delete the type when the component is deleted. Is there any way to do what I described?

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Here's what you'd include in your components table.

CREATE TABLE `components` (
    `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
    `typeId` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
    `moreInfo` VARCHAR(32), 
    -- etc
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
    KEY `type` (`typeId`)
    CONSTRAINT `myForeignKey` FOREIGN KEY (`typeId`)
      REFERENCES `types` (`id`) ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE
)

Just remember that you need to use the InnoDB storage engine: the default MyISAM storage engine doesn't support foreign keys.