use Perl

[I started asking this question on IRC, but it got too complicated... It seems like something basic that most DBAs should know, but I'm not a DBA and I couldn't find a good solution after some searching.]

What's the best way to represent polymorphism in a collection of database tables?

Consider a website where students answer surveys administered by faculty or departments. Start with three database tables: survey, faculty, and department. How do I indicate one-to-one ownership from faculty to survey and from department to survey? I like the strong-typing guarantees of foreign keys, so I really want to avoid un-keyed solutions.

I've thought about the following solutions, but I'm unhappy with all of them:

One null field

Put "faculty_id" and "department_id" foreign keys in the survey table and insist that exactly one is not null. This is awkward in code due to the pervasive conditionals, and problematic as I consider more things that both faculty and departments can own (e.g. student rosters)

Single owner table, two-to-one

The survey table has an owner_id which points to an owner table which has faculty_id and department_id fields, exactly one of them non-null. This is easier to code than the above because everything gets exactly one "owner".

Single owner table, two-to-many

Ownership is not represented in the survey table, but instead the owner table has faculty_id, department_id and survey_id fields. This seems to have no advantage over the "One null field" option.

Multiple owner tables

Create a faculty_survey and department_survey one-to-many tables. How do ensure that each survey is represented exactly once across those two tables?

Multiple survey tables

Partition the surveys into two tables, one for faculty surveys and one for department surveys. This is very painful as I add more things that can be owned.

Am I missing something obvious? What happens when I add another type that can be an owner?