Top Most What is Referential Integrity in Database or SQL - MySQL Example Tutorial

Referential Integrity is set of constraints applied to foreign key which prevents entering a row in child table (where you have foreign key) for which you don't have any corresponding row in parent table i.e. entering NULL or invalid foreign keys. Referential Integrity prevents your table from having  incorrect or incomplete relationship e.g. If you have two tables Order and Customer where Customer is parent table with primary key customer_id and Order is child table with foreign key customer_id. Since as per business rules you can not have an Order without a Customer and this business rule can be implemented using referential integrity in SQL on relational database. Referential Integrity will cause failure on any INSERT or UPDATE SQL statement changing value of customer_id in child table, If value of customer_id is not present in Customer table. By the way What is Referential Integrity in SQL is also an important SQL question similar to finding second highest salary in SQL or difference between truncate and delete  and should be prepared well before going for any job interview, where knowledge of SQL is one of the requirement.

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