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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 ...
Another type of DDL sentence in SQL is used to define referential integrity relationships, usually implemented as primary key and foreign key tags in some columns of the tables. These two statements can be included in a CREATE TABLE or an ALTER TABLE sentence;
The primary keys within a database are used to define the relationships among the tables. When a PK migrates to another table, it becomes a foreign key (FK) in the other table. When each cell can contain only one value and the PK migrates into a regular entity table, this design pattern can represent either a one-to-one or one-to-many relationship.
The Suppliers and Parts database is an example relational database that is referred to extensively in the literature [citation needed] and described in detail in C. J. Date's An Introduction to Database Systems, 8th ed. [1] It is a simple database comprising three tables: Supplier, Part and Shipment, and is often used as a minimal exemplar of the interrelationships found in a database.
An associative (or junction) table maps two or more tables together by referencing the primary keys (PK) of each data table. In effect, it contains a number of foreign keys (FK), each in a many-to-one relationship from the junction table to the individual data tables. The PK of the associative table is typically composed of the FK columns ...
A table in a SQL database schema corresponds to a predicate variable; the contents of a table to a relation; key constraints, other constraints, and SQL queries correspond to predicates. However, SQL databases deviate from the relational model in many details , and Codd fiercely argued against deviations that compromise the original principles.
For example, the "Doctor Last Name" field might be assigned as a primary key of the Doctor table with all people having same last name organized alphabetically according to the first three letters of their first name. A table can also have a foreign key which indicates that field is linked to the primary key of another table. [2]
Indexes are used to police database constraints, such as UNIQUE, EXCLUSION, PRIMARY KEY and FOREIGN KEY.An index may be declared as UNIQUE, which creates an implicit constraint on the underlying table.