Tutorial: Building with CleaveDB

Cascade on Delete

When modeling parent-child hierarchies—such as an order and its line items, or an article and its attachments—deleting the parent document should often delete the dependent child entities as well. CleaveQL enables this behavior using ON DELETE CASCADE on graph bonds.

Configuring a cascading bond

Append ON DELETE CASCADE to your BOND command:

BOND "orders:ord_1" TO "line_items:item_1" AS "contains" ON DELETE CASCADE

If "orders:ord_1" is subsequently soft-deleted with DRAIN, CleaveDB automatically cascades the soft-deletion to "line_items:item_1", moving both records into _rubbish.

Cascading recovery with SALVAGE

Cascade rules also operate during recovery workflows:

SALVAGE orders "ord_1"

CleaveDB recognizes the cascade metadata, restoring the parent order alongside all its linked child line items and reactivating the bonds between them.