|
Referential Integrity
Referential integrity is a property of data stating that all its references are valid. In the context of relational databases, it requires that if a value of one attribute (column) of a relation (table) references a value of another attribute (either in the same or a different relation), then the referenced value must exist. For referential integrity to hold in a relational database, any column in a base table that is declared a foreign key can only contain either null values or values from a parent table's primary key or a candidate key. In other words, when a foreign key value is used it must reference a valid, existing primary key in the parent table. For instance, deleting a record that contains a value referred to by a foreign key in another table would break referential integrity. Some relational database management systems (RDBMS) can enforce referential integrity, normally either by deleting the foreign key rows as well to maintain integrity, or by returning an error and n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Referential Integrity Broken
Reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a ''name'' for the second object. The second object, the one to which the first object refers, is called the ''referent'' of the first object. A name is usually a phrase or expression, or some other symbolic representation. Its referent may be anything – a material object, a person, an event, an activity, or an abstract concept. References can take on many forms, including: a thought, a sensory perception that is audible (onomatopoeia), visual (text), olfactory, or tactile, emotional state, relationship with other, spacetime coordinate, symbolic or alpha-numeric, a physical object or an energy projection. In some cases, methods are used that intentionally hide the reference from some observers, as in cryptography. References feature in many sph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monoids
In abstract algebra, a branch of mathematics, a monoid is a set equipped with an associative binary operation and an identity element. For example, the nonnegative integers with addition form a monoid, the identity element being 0. Monoids are semigroups with identity. Such algebraic structures occur in several branches of mathematics. The functions from a set into itself form a monoid with respect to function composition. More generally, in category theory, the morphisms of an object to itself form a monoid, and, conversely, a monoid may be viewed as a category with a single object. In computer science and computer programming, the set of strings built from a given set of characters is a free monoid. Transition monoids and syntactic monoids are used in describing finite-state machines. Trace monoids and history monoids provide a foundation for process calculi and concurrent computing. In theoretical computer science, the study of monoids is fundamental for automata theor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slowly Changing Dimension
A slowly changing dimension (SCD) in data management and data warehousing is a dimension which contains relatively static data which can change slowly but unpredictably, rather than according to a regular schedule. Some examples of typical slowly changing dimensions are entities as names of geographical locations, customers, or products. Some scenarios can cause referential integrity problems. For example, a database may contain a fact table that stores sales records. This fact table would be linked to dimensions by means of foreign keys. One of these dimensions may contain data about the company's salespeople: e.g., the regional offices in which they work. However, the salespeople are sometimes transferred from one regional office to another. For historical sales reporting purposes it may be necessary to keep a record of the fact that a particular sales person had been assigned to a particular regional office at an earlier date, whereas that sales person is now assigned to a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surrogate Key
A surrogate key (or synthetic key, pseudokey, entity identifier, factless key, or technical key) in a database is a unique identifier for either an ''entity'' in the modeled world or an ''object'' in the database. The surrogate key is ''not'' derived from application data, unlike a ''natural'' (or ''business'') key. Definition There are at least two definitions of a surrogate: ; Surrogate (1) – Hall, Owlett and Todd (1976): A surrogate represents an ''entity'' in the outside world. The surrogate is internally generated by the system but is nevertheless visible to the user or application. ; Surrogate (2) – Wieringa and De Jonge (1991): A surrogate represents an ''object'' in the database itself. The surrogate is internally generated by the system and is invisible to the user or application. The ''Surrogate (1)'' definition relates to a data model rather than a storage model and is used throughout this article. See Date (1998). An important distinction between a s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Propagation Constraint
In database systems, a propagation constraint "details what should happen to a related table when we update a row or rows of a target table" (Paul Beynon-Davies, 2004, p.108). Tables are linked using primary key to foreign key relationships. It is possible for users to update one table in a relationship in such a way that the relationship is no longer consistent and this is known as breaking referential integrity. An example of breaking referential integrity: if a table of employees includes a department number for 'Housewares' which is a foreign key to a table of departments and a user deletes that department from the department table then Housewares employees records would refer to a non-existent department number. Propagation constraints are methods used by relational database management systems (RDBMS) to solve this problem by ensuring that relationships between tables are preserved without error. In his database textbook, Beynon-Davies explains the three ways that RDBMS handle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Functional Dependency
In relational database theory, a functional dependency is a constraint between two sets of attributes in a relation from a database. In other words, a functional dependency is a constraint between two attributes in a relation. Given a relation ''R'' and sets of attributes X,Y \subseteq R, ''X'' is said to functionally determine ''Y'' (written ''X'' → ''Y'') if and only if each ''X'' value in ''R'' is associated with precisely one ''Y'' value in ''R''; ''R'' is then said to ''satisfy'' the functional dependency ''X'' → ''Y''. Equivalently, the projection \Pi_R is a function, i.e. ''Y'' is a function of ''X''. In simple words, if the values for the ''X'' attributes are known (say they are ''x''), then the values for the ''Y'' attributes corresponding to ''x'' can be determined by looking them up in ''any'' tuple of ''R'' containing ''x''. Customarily ''X'' is called the ''determinant'' set and ''Y'' the ''dependent'' set. A functional dependency FD: ''X'' → ''Y'' is called ''tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Entity Integrity
Entity integrity is concerned with ensuring that each row of a table has a unique and non-null primary key value; this is the same as saying that each row in a table represents a single instance of the entity type modelled by the table. A requirement of E. F. Codd in his seminal paper is that a primary key of an entity, or any part of it, can never take a null value. The relational model states that every relation (or table) must have an identifier, called the primary key (abbreviated PK), in such a way that every row of the same relation be identifiable by its content, that is, by a unique and minimal value. The PK is a not empty set of attributes (or columns). The same format applies to the foreign key (abbreviated FK) because each FK matches a preexistent PK. Each of attributes being part of a PK (or of a FK) must have data values (such as numbers, letters or typographic symbols) but not data marks (also known as NULL marks in SQL world). Morphologically, a composite primary key ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Domain/key Normal Form
Domain-key normal form (DK/NF) is a normal form used in database normalization which requires that the database contains no constraints other than domain constraints and key constraints. A domain constraint specifies the permissible values for a given attribute, while a key constraint specifies the attributes that uniquely identify a row in a given table. The domain/key normal form is achieved when every constraint on the relation is a logical consequence of the definition of keys and domains, and enforcing key and domain restraints and conditions causes all constraints to be met. Thus, it avoids all non-temporal anomalies. The reason to use domain/key normal form is to avoid having general constraints in the database that are not clear domain or key constraints. Most databases can easily test domain and key constraints on attributes. General constraints however would normally require special database programming in the form of stored procedures (often of the trigger variety) t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dangling Pointer
Dangling pointers and wild pointers in computer programming are pointers that do not point to a valid object of the appropriate type. These are special cases of memory safety violations. More generally, dangling references and wild references are references that do not resolve to a valid destination. Dangling pointers arise during object destruction, when an object that has an incoming reference is deleted or deallocated, without modifying the value of the pointer, so that the pointer still points to the memory location of the deallocated memory. The system may reallocate the previously freed memory, and if the program then dereferences the (now) dangling pointer, '' unpredictable behavior may result'', as the memory may now contain completely different data. If the program writes to memory referenced by a dangling pointer, a silent corruption of unrelated data may result, leading to subtle bugs that can be extremely difficult to find. If the memory has been reallocated to anoth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Null Pointer
In computing, a null pointer or null reference is a value saved for indicating that the pointer or reference does not refer to a valid object. Programs routinely use null pointers to represent conditions such as the end of a list of unknown length or the failure to perform some action; this use of null pointers can be compared to nullable types and to the ''Nothing'' value in an option type. A null pointer should not be confused with an uninitialized pointer: a null pointer is guaranteed to compare unequal to any pointer that points to a valid object. However, depending on the language and implementation, an uninitialized pointer may not have any such guarantee. It might compare equal to other, valid pointers; or it might compare equal to null pointers. It might do both at different times; or the comparison might be undefined behaviour. C In C, two null pointers of any type are guaranteed to compare equal. The preprocessor macro NULL is defined as an implementation-defined n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which may run either on the same computer or on another computer across a network (including the Internet). Microsoft markets at least a dozen different editions of Microsoft SQL Server, aimed at different audiences and for workloads ranging from small single-machine applications to large Internet-facing applications with many concurrent users. History The history of Microsoft SQL Server begins with the first Microsoft SQL Server product—SQL Server 1.0, a 16-bit server for the OS/2 operating system in 1989—and extends to the current day. Its name is entirely descriptive, it being ''server'' software that responds to queries in the '' SQL'' language. Milestones * MS SQL Server for OS/2 began as a project to port Sybase SQL Server onto O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Delete (SQL)
In the database structured query language ( SQL), the DELETE statement removes one or more records from a table. A subset may be defined for deletion using a condition, otherwise all records are removed. Some database management systems (DBMSs), like MySQL, allow deletion of rows from multiple tables with one DELETE statement (this is sometimes called multi-table DELETE). Examples Delete rows from table ''pies'' where column ''flavor'' equals ''Lemon Meringue'': DELETE FROM pies WHERE flavor='Lemon Meringue'; Delete rows in ''trees'', if the value of ''height'' is smaller than 80. DELETE FROM trees WHERE height < 80; Delete all rows from ''mytable'': [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
