Actions that happen as a result of a foreign key event being triggered are classified in the following ways:

Update Integrity

Update Integrity actions are triggered when the foreign key referenced by a column is Updated.

Using the Employee timesheet example above, if the EmployeeID for Bob is changed from 100 to 200 all the corresponding timesheets with their EmployeeID column set to 100 will also be updated to 200.

See the Foreign Key Integrity Operation Types topic for information about each action type.

Delete Integrity

Delete Integrity actions are triggered when the foreign key column is deleted. Since all Foreign Keys point to a Primary Key in another table this means the primary key entry has been deleted on the targeted table.

Using the Employee timesheet example again, when an Employee row is removed from the database all of the corresponding timesheet entries are also removed.

See the Foreign Key Integrity Operation Types topic for information about each action type.

Dialog Example

Look at the bottom of the following dialog to see the Integrity Actions and their related settings.