实际上,外键强制执行参照完整性,这有助于我们自动维护数据的一致性和完整性。用两个名为“ customer”和“ orders”的表的示例可以理解。在这里,“客户”是父表,“订单”是子表。我们无法为不存在的客户创建订单。可以通过在两个表中插入以下值来证明这一点:
mysql> Select * from Customer; +----+--------+ | id | name | +----+--------+ | 1 | Gaurav | | 2 | Raman | | 3 | Harshit| | 4 | Aarav | +----+--------+ 4 rows in set (0.00 sec) mysql> Select * from orders; +-----------+-------------+------+ | order_id | product | id | +-----------+-------------+------+ | 100 | Notebook | 1 | | 110 | Pen | 1 | | 120 | Book | 2 | | 130 | Charts | 2 | +-----------+-------------+------+ 4 rows in set (0.00 sec)
现在,假设如果我们尝试为不存在的客户(在“ customer”表中不存在id 10)将值插入“ orders”表中,那么由于外键约束失败,MySQL会抛出如下错误。
mysql> insert into orders values(400, 'Notebook',10); ERROR 1452 (23000): Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails (`query`.`orders`, CONSTRAINT `orders_ibfk_1` FOREIGN KEY (`id`) REFERENCES `customer` (`id`))