Foreign Keys in Microsoft SQL Server

One of the most important concepts in databases is creating relationships between

database tables. These relationships provide a mechanism for linking data stored in
multiple tables and retrieving it in an efficient fashion. In order to create a link between
two tables, you must specify a foreign key in one table that references a column in
another table.

Database Tables and Relationships

You might already know that databases are simply a series of tables, similar to what you
might already use in a spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel. In fact, you can
even convert an Excel spreadsheet to a database. Where databases diverge from
spreadsheets, however, is when it comes to building powerful relationships between
tables.
Consider, for example a database used by a company to track human resources
information. That database might have a table called Employees that contains the
following information for each member of the companys staff:
Employee ID
FirstName
LastName
OfficePhone
HomePhone
PositionID
In this example, the employee ID is a uniquely generated integer that is assigned to each
employee when they are added to the database. The position ID is a job code used to
reference the employees position in the company. In this scheme, an employee may only
have one position, but multiple (or no) employees may fill each position. For example,
you might have hundreds of employees with a Cashier position.
The database might also contain a table called Positions with the following additional
information about each position:
PositionID
Title
JobLevel
SkillCategory
Location
The Position ID field in this table is similar to the Employee ID field in the Employees
table it is a uniquely generated integer that is created when a position is added to the
database.
When we go to pull a listing of employees from the database, it would be natural to
request each persons name and their title. However, this information is stored in multiple

database tables, so it can only be retrieved using a JOIN query which requires an existing
relationship between the tables.
When you look at the structure of the tables, the field defining the relationship is
probably obvious the Position ID field. Each employee can have only one position and
that position is identified by including the Position ID from the Positions tables
corresponding entry. In addition to being the primary key for the Positions table, in this
example, the Position ID field is also a foreign key from the Employees table to the
Positions table. The database can then use this field to correlate information from
multiple tables and ensure that any changes or additions to the database continue to
enforce referential integrity.
Once youve identified the foreign key, you can go ahead and pull the desired
information from the database using the following query:
SELECT FirstName, LastName, Title
FROM Employees INNER JOIN Positions
ON Employees.PositionID = Positions.PositionID

Creating Foreign Keys in SQL Server

Technically, you dont need to define the relationship explicitly to be able to perform
queries like the one above. However, if you do explicitly define the relationship using a
foreign key constraint, the database will be able to perform some housekeeping work for
you:
When you add a new record to the Employees table, the database will ensure that
the Position ID you enter is a valid primary key in the Positions table.
If you change a Position ID in the Positions table, the database can perform the
required updates to the Employees table to preserve consistency.
The database can protect against the impact of a deletion of a position from the
position table by either refusing to delete a position with corresponding employee
entries or performing a cascading delete of all related employees.
Heres how you would create the foreign key in SQL Server:
ALTER TABLE Employees
ADD FOREIGN KEY (PositionID)
REFERENCES

Positions(PositionID)

You may also create a foreign key when you create a table by adding the clause:
FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES Positions(PositionID)

to the end of the column definition for the foreign key column.