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Integrity Constraints

Integrity constraints in Database Management Systems (DBMS) are rules that ensure data quality and consistency during operations like insertion, deletion, or updating. There are four main types of integrity constraints: Domain, Entity, Referential Integrity, and Key Constraints, each serving to maintain specific data validity and relationships. Violations of these constraints can lead to issues such as null primary keys, invalid foreign keys, or duplicate values in primary key columns.

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48 views4 pages

Integrity Constraints

Integrity constraints in Database Management Systems (DBMS) are rules that ensure data quality and consistency during operations like insertion, deletion, or updating. There are four main types of integrity constraints: Domain, Entity, Referential Integrity, and Key Constraints, each serving to maintain specific data validity and relationships. Violations of these constraints can lead to issues such as null primary keys, invalid foreign keys, or duplicate values in primary key columns.

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jaswanth.r090
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Integrity Constraints

In database management systems (DBMS) there is a certain set of rules


which are used to maintain the quality and consistency of data in the
database. Every time there is an insertion, deletion, or updating of data
in the database it is the responsibility of these integrity constraints to
maintain the integrity of data and thus help to prevent accidental damage
to the database.

What are Integrity Constraints in DBMS?


In Database Management Systems, integrity constraints are pre-
defined set of rules that are applied on the table fields(columns) or
relations to ensure that the overall validity, integrity, and consistency of
the data present in the database table is maintained. Evaluation of all the
conditions or rules mentioned in the integrity constraint is done every
time a table insert, update, delete, or alter operation is performed. The
data can be inserted, updated, deleted, or altered only if the result of the
constraint comes out to be True.

Types of Integrity Constraints


There are four types of integrity constraints in DBMS:

1. Domain Constraint
2. Entity Constraint
3. Referential Integrity Constraint
4. Key Constraint

Domain Constraint

Domain integrity constraint contains a certain set of rules or conditions


to restrict the kind of attributes or values a column can hold in the
database table. The data type of a domain can be string, integer,
character, DateTime, currency, etc.
Example:

Consider a Student's table having Roll No, Name, Age, Class of


students.

Roll No Name Age Class


101 Adam 14 6
102 Steve 16 8
103 David 8 4
104 Bruce 18 12
105 Tim 6 A

In the above student's table, the value A in the last row last column
violates the domain integrity constraint because the Class attribute
contains only integer values while A is a character.

Entity Integrity Constraint


Entity Integrity Constraint is used to ensure that the primary key cannot
be null. A primary key is used to identify individual records in a table
and if the primary key has a null value, then we can't identify those
records. There can be null values anywhere in the table except the
primary key column.

Example:

Consider Employees table having Id, Name, and salary of employees

ID Name Salary
1101 Jackson 40000
1102 Harry 60000
1103 Steve 80000
1104 Ash 1800000
James 36000
In the above employee's table, we can see that the ID column is the
primary key and contains a null value in the last row which violates the
entity integrity constraint.

Referential Integrity Constraint


Referential Integrity Constraint ensures that there must always exist a
valid relationship between two relational database tables. This valid
relationship between the two tables confirms that a foreign key exists in
a table. It should always reference a corresponding value or attribute in
the other table or be null.

Example:
Consider an Employee and a Department table where Dept_ID acts as a
foreign key between the two tables

Employees Table

ID Name Salary Dept_ID


1101 Jackson 40000 3
1102 Harry 60000 2
1103 Steve 80000 4
1104 Ash 1800000 3
1105 James 36000 1

Department Table

Dept_ID Dept_Name
1 Sales
2 HR
3 Technical

In the above example, Dept_ID acts as a foreign key in the Employees


table and a primary key in the Department table. Row
having DeptID=4 violates the referential integrity constraint since
DeptID 4 is not defined as a primary key column in the Departments
table.

Key constraint
Keys are the set of entities that are used to identify an entity within its
entity set uniquely. There could be multiple keys in a single entity set,
but out of these multiple keys, only one key will be the primary key. A
primary key can only contain unique and not null values in the relational
database table.

Example:

Consider a student's table

Roll No Name Age Class


101 Adam 14 6
102 Steve 16 8
103 David 8 4
104 Bruce 18 12
102 Tim 6 2

The last row of the student's table violates the key integrity constraint
since Roll No 102 is repeated twice in the primary key column. A
primary key must be unique and not null therefore duplicate values are
not allowed in the Roll No column of the above student's table.

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