I was looking for info on foreign keys.... AGAIN! ... and happened to notice on webschools.com they have different examples of the same thing. for the foreign key example they have
CREATE TABLE Orders
(
O_Id int NOT NULL,
OrderNo int NOT NULL,
P_Id int,
PRIMARY KEY (O_Id),
FOREIGN KEY (P_Id) REFERENCES Persons(P_Id)
)
CREATE TABLE Orders
(
O_Id int NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
OrderNo int NOT NULL,
P_Id int FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES Persons(P_Id)
)
CREATE TABLE Orders
(
O_Id int NOT NULL,
OrderNo int NOT NULL,
P_Id int,
PRIMARY KEY (O_Id),
CONSTRAINT fk_PerOrders FOREIGN KEY (P_Id)
REFERENCES Persons(P_Id)
)
now..........
what's the difference?...
How do I know which one I'm suppose to use for my database? I have a feeling this will help resolve a lot of the confusion I'm having with SQL...
No difference in effect: They achieve exactly the same thing.
I prefer the in-line version, because it puts the fk definition as close to the column definition as possible.
There's a 3rd way - a separate alter table statement (which I think is the "official" way):
alter table orders
add contraint fk_PerOrders
foreign key p_id references persons(p_id);
You may find some databases don't support one version or the other.
All of them are doing same thing. Use the one which you feel is easy to understand.
All do same (three ways):
In first, you first defined P_Id as int then defined foreign key constraint.
In second, P_Id int FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES Persons(P_Id). P_Id is defecation and foreign key constraint defecation in same line.
In third, a foreign key constraint name is also give fk_PerOrders. that can be useful later when you wants to drop constraint. e.g.
ALTER TABLE Orders
DROP FOREIGN KEY fk_PerOrders
Its always good practice to give name to a constraint.
Related
I have created PERSON table in Oracle by this SQL syntax:
Create table person
(
p_id int not null,
personName char(5) not null );
Then I am trying to create ORDERS table with the following syntax:
CREATE TABLE Orders
(
O_Id int NOT NULL,
OrderNo int NOT NULL,
P_Id int,
PRIMARY KEY (O_Id),
CONSTRAINT fk_PerOrders FOREIGN KEY (P_Id)
REFERENCES person(p_id) );
But I am getting the following error .
No matching unique or primary key for this column-list.
What is the problem ? How can I solve this ?
Add primary key to person table:
CREATE TABLE person(
p_id int not null,
personName char(5) not null,
PRIMARY KEY (p_ID)
);
SqlFiddleDemo
Foreign keys enforce a one-to-many relationship. That is, however many records there are in the dependent table they can only reference a single record in the parent table. This means the referenced column(s) in the parent table must be constrained by a PRIMARY or UNIQUE key.
The error message is telling you that there is no such constraint on person(p_id). And lo! if we compare the two DDL statements you have posted we can see that you have created a primary key for ORDERS but not for PERSON.
The solution is simple: constrain P_ID by adding a primary key to PERSON. You can either drop and re-create the table, or you can use an alter table statement to add a primary key.
You should add primary key to person table.
try this:
ALTER TABLE Person
ADD CONSTRAINT p_id PRIMARY KEY (p_id);
I have two tables:
Article
Subscription
In the Article table I have two columns that make up the primary key: id, sl. In the Subscription table I have a foreign key 'idsl`.
I use this constraint :
constraint FK_idsl
foreign key (idsl) references CSS_SubscriptionGroup(id, sl)
But when I run the query, I getting this error:
Number of referencing columns in foreign key differs from number of referenced columns, table X
In Article Table I have two fields that are the primary key: id,sl. In the Subscription Table I have a foreign key 'idsl`
This design is broken - it is apparent that the composite primary key in Article(id, sl) has been mangled into a single compound foreign key in table Subscription. This isn't a good idea.
Instead, you will need to change the design of table Subscription to include separate columns for both id and sl, of the same type as the Article Table, and then create a composite foreign key consisting of both columns, referencing Article in the same order as the primary key, e.g:
CREATE TABLE Article
(
id INT NOT NULL,
sl VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
-- Other Columns
CONSTRAINT PK_Article PRIMARY KEY(id, sl) -- composite primary key
);
CREATE TABLE Subscription
(
-- Other columns
id INT NOT NULL, -- Same type as Article.id
sl VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL, -- Same type as Article.sl
CONSTRAINT FK_Subscription_Article FOREIGN KEY(id, sl)
REFERENCES Article(id, sl) -- Same order as Article PK
);
Edit
One thing to consider here is that by convention a column named table.id or table.tableid should be unique, and is the primary key for the table. However, since table Article requires an additional column sl in the primary key, it implies that id isn't unique.
correct syntax for relation:
CONSTRAINT FK_OtherTable_ParentTable
FOREIGN KEY(OrderId, CompanyId) REFERENCES dbo.ParentTable(OrderId, CompanyId)
You must try like this:
constraint FK_idsl foreign key (id,sl) references CSS_SubscriptionGroup(id,sl)
If I declare the table below does it implicitly imply that both the foreign keys make a unique primary key or do I need to do something more to make both attributes as a primary key?
CREATE TABLE Report_has_Items
(
ReportID int REFERENCES Report(ReportID) NOT NULL,
ItemID int REFERENCES Item(ItemID) NOT NULL
)
Essentially both attributes which are foreign keys from other tables, together would form a unique key.
No it doesn't. The above table has no primary key. If you want to use the fields as a primary key use:
CREATE TABLE Report_has_Items(
ReportID int REFERENCES Report(ReportID) NOT NULL,
ItemID int REFERENCES Item(ItemID) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (ReportID, ItemID)
)
or something similar depending on your sql dilect.
Let's name our constraints, eh?
CREATE TABLE dbo.Report_has_Items(
ReportID int NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT [FK_RHI_Report] (ReportId) REFERENCES dbo.Report(ReportID),
ItemID int NOT NULL,
Constraint [FK_RHI_Item] (ItemId) REFERENCES dbo.Item(ItemID),
CONSTRAINT [PK_RHI] PRIMARY KEY (ReportID, ItemID)
)
I am not sure i understand your question completely but i assume you are trying to create a composite primary key (primary key with more than one attribute). You could do the following.
CREATE TABLE Report_has_Items(
ReportID int references Report(ReportID),
ItemID int references Item(ItemID),
PRIMARY KEY (ReportID , ItemID )
);
Note:The pair (ReportID , ItemID ) must then be unique for the table and neither value can be NULL.
Here is a very useful link for SQL Queries
I mean for example I can create table like
create table XTable
(
idt int not null primary key,
value nvarchar(50),
idq int,
constraint fk_idq foreign key(idq) references YTable(idq)
)
and I can create it like this
create table XTable
(
idt int not null primary key,
value nvarchar(50),
idq int,
foreign key(idq) references YTable(idq)
)
I usually create table like in the second example but now I'm curious about the first example. What is the difference?
The first one assigns a user-defined name to the foreign key, the second one will assign a system-generated name to the foreign key.
User-defined foreign key names can be useful for subsequent statements like these:
ALTER TABLE XTable DROP CONSTRAINT fk_idq;
ALTER TABLE XTable ENABLE CONSTRAINT fk_idq;
ALTER TABLE XTable DISABLE CONSTRAINT fk_idq;
It's harder to alter constraints with system-generated names, as you have to discover those names first.
The first option is purely for naming the constraint.
From SQL FOREIGN KEY Constraint
To allow naming of a FOREIGN KEY constraint, and for defining a FOREIGN KEY constraint on multiple columns, use the following SQL syntax
CREATE TABLE Orders
(
O_Id int NOT NULL,
OrderNo int NOT NULL,
P_Id int,
PRIMARY KEY (O_Id),
CONSTRAINT fk_PerOrders FOREIGN KEY (P_Id)
REFERENCES Persons(P_Id)
)
Also, from CREATE TABLE (Transact-SQL) one can see that [ CONSTRAINT constraint_name ] is optional.
Apart from controlling the name, nothing really. SQL Server will supply a name if you omit it. FYI, you only need this syntax (SQL Fiddle):
create table XTable
(
idt int not null primary key,
value nvarchar(50),
idq int references YTable(idq)
)
Here's a fuller example.
Naive question with the answer "No" , I believe, but still would like to ask.
Table_parent
pk_parent_surrogate
parent_natural_unique_key
Table_child
pk_child_surrogate
child_natural_NOT_unique
Is that true that the only possible declarative relationship among main database vendors is
pk_parent_surrogate ----------< pk_child_surrogate
and we can't have declarative constraint or foreign key in other words for pair
parent_natural_unique_key -------< child_natural_NOT_unique
My answer here is based on my MS SQL knowledge - although I believe the same answer is correct for ANSI standards as well, i'm not 100% sure...
YES - you CAN do this as long as you've got a unique constraint on the column in your parent table that you want to use as the anchor column for the key.
You can create a FOREIGN KEY constraint as part
of the table definition when you create a table.
If a table already exists, you can add a
FOREIGN KEY constraint, provided that the
FOREIGN KEY constraint is linked to an existing
PRIMARY KEY constraints or UNIQUE constraint in
another, or the same, table. A table can contain
multiple FOREIGN KEY constraints.
And as an example of this sort of key...
use tempdb
CREATE TABLE parent(
pk int identity primary key,
candidate_key int unique not null)
CREATE TABLE child(
pk int identity primary key,
join_key int references parent(candidate_key))
See here for more information.
Try code like this:
create table testunique (id int identity(1,1) primary key, otherid int)
go
create unique index ixOther on testunique(otherid)
go
create table testFK (id int identity(1,1) primary key, someid int)
go
alter table testFK add constraint fkTest foreign key (someid) references testunique(otherid)
Rob