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A NOT NULL constraint is functionally equivalent to the following check constraint with an IS NOT NULL predicate: . CHECK (column IS NOT NULL) Some relational database management systems are able to optimize performance when the NOT NULL constraint syntax is used as opposed to the CHECK constraint syntax given above.
E. F. Codd mentioned nulls as a method of representing missing data in the relational model in a 1975 paper in the FDT Bulletin of ACM-SIGMOD.Codd's paper that is most commonly cited with the semantics of Null (as adopted in SQL) is his 1979 paper in the ACM Transactions on Database Systems, in which he also introduced his Relational Model/Tasmania, although much of the other proposals from ...
It is possible to put UNIQUE constraints on nullable columns but the SQL standard states that the constraint does not guarantee uniqueness of nullable columns (uniqueness is not enforced for rows where any of the columns contains a null). According to the SQL [2] standard a unique constraint does not enforce uniqueness in the presence of nulls ...
The PK is a not empty set of attributes (or columns). The same format applies to the foreign key (abbreviated FK) because each FK matches a preexistent PK. Each of attributes being part of a PK (or of a FK) must have data values (such as numbers, letters or typographic symbols) but not data marks (also known as NULL marks in SQL world).
Also, self-references are possible (not fully implemented in MS SQL Server though [5]). On inserting a new row into the referencing table, the relational database management system (RDBMS) checks if the entered key value exists in the referenced table. If not, no insert is possible.
Additionally, because SQL operators return Unknown when comparing anything with Null directly, SQL provides two Null-specific comparison predicates: IS NULL and IS NOT NULL test whether data is or is not Null. [8] SQL does not explicitly support universal quantification, and must work it out as a negated existential quantification.
A foreign key is a set of attributes in a table that refers to the primary key of another table, linking these two tables. In the context of relational databases, a foreign key is subject to an inclusion dependency constraint that the tuples consisting of the foreign key attributes in one relation, R, must also exist in some other (not necessarily distinct) relation, S; furthermore that those ...
The SQL:1999 standard introduced a BOOLEAN data type as an optional feature (T031). When restricted by a NOT NULL constraint, a SQL BOOLEAN behaves like Booleans in other languages, which can store only TRUE and FALSE values. However, if it is nullable, which is the default like all other SQL data types, it can have the special null value also.