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referential integrity

   Also found in: Acronyms, Wikipedia 0.03 sec.

referential integrity

A database management safeguard that ensures every foreign key matches a primary key. For example, customer numbers in a customer file are the primary keys, and customer numbers in the order file are the foreign keys. If a customer record is deleted, the order records must also be deleted; otherwise they are left without a primary reference. If the DBMS does not test for this, it must be programmed into the applications.


(database)referential integrity - A collection of properties which should be possessed by data in a relational database.

For example, in a database of family members, if we enter A as a spouse of B, we should also enter B as a spouse of A. Similarly, if we remove one end of the relationship we should also remove the other.


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Without properly correlating the backup and recovery processes, each database may maintain independent referential integrity, but the correlation between the two may be lost.
stale logins) and checks the referential integrity of user names.
the ability to split a table into two tables and maintain full referential integrity
 
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