INF: Implementing Referential Integrity and Cascading Actions (White Paper) (322323)

SUMMARY

The white paper that this article references is a chapter excerpt from the book Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000 from APress Books. Database normalization is used to avoid duplicates in a database to avoid potential errors. Although database normalization minimizes the possibility of errors, it does not completely prevent them. There is still the need for a set of data-integrity rules to enforce the relationships between tables and to keep the database as consistent as possible. This set of rules is called referential integrity, and it is a part of the wider set of rules that enforce data integrity in general.

This document also explores the rules that are used to maintain referential integrity in various table relationships, with a focus on cascading actions. Cascading actions are actions that have to be performed on a secondary table to compensate when a primary table is modified.

This chapter also describes the use of declarative referential integrity and the use of triggers to maintain data integrity.

To view this white paper, visit the following Microsoft Web site: