By PenchalaRaju.

Yanamala
INTEGRITY CONSTRAINTS

Integrity Constraints are used to prevent the entry of invalid information into
tables. There are five Integrity Constraints Available in Oracle. They are :

• Not Null
• Primary Key
• Foreign Key
• Check
• Unique

Not Null

By default all columns in a table can contain null values. If you want to ensure
that a column must always have a value, i.e. it should not be left blank, then
define a NOT NULL constraint on it.

Always be careful in defining NOT NULL constraint on columns, for example in

employee table some employees might have commission and some employees
might not have any commission. If you put NOT NULL constraint on COMM
column then you will not be able insert rows for those employees whose
commission is null. Only put NOT NULL constraint on those column which are
essential for example in EMP table ENAME column is a good candidate for NOT
NULL constraint.

Primary Key

Each table can have one primary key, which uniquely identifies each row in a
table and ensures that no duplicate rows exist. Use the following guidelines when
selecting a primary key:
• Whenever practical, use a column containing a sequence number. It is a
simple way to satisfy all the other guidelines.
• Minimize your use of composite primary keys. Although composite primary
keys are allowed, they do not satisfy all of the other recommendations. For
example, composite primary key values are long and cannot be assigned
by sequence numbers.
• Choose a column whose data values are unique, because the purpose of
a primary key is to uniquely identify each row of the table.
• Choose a column whose data values are never changed. A primary key
value is only used to identify a row in the table, and its data should never
be used for any other purpose. Therefore, primary key values should
rarely or never be changed.
• Choose a column that does not contain any nulls. A PRIMARY KEY
constraint, by definition, does not allow any row to contain a null in any
column that is part of the primary key.
• Choose a column that is short and numeric. Short primary keys are easy
to type. You can use sequence numbers to easily generate numeric
primary keys.
For example in EMP table EMPNO column is a good candidate for PRIMARY
KEY.
To define a primary key on a table give the following command.

Alter table EMP add constraint emppk primary key (empno);

The above command will succeed only if the existing values are compliant i.e. no
duplicates are there in EMPNO column. If EMPNO column contains any
duplicate value then the above command fails and Oracle returns an error
indicating of non compliant values.

Whenever you define a PRIMARY KEY oracle automatically creates a index on

that column. If an Index already exist on that column then oracle uses that index
only.

FOREIGN KEY

On whichever column you put FOREIGN KEY constraint then the values in that
column must refer to existing values in the other table. A foreign key column can
refer to primary key or unique key column of other tables. This Primary key and
foreign key relationship is also known as PARENT-CHILD relationship i.e. the
table which has Primary Key is known as PARENT table and the table which has
foreign key is known as CHILD table. This relationship is also known as
REFERENTIAL INTEGRITY.

The following shows an example of parent child relationship.

Here EMPNO in attendance table is a foreign key referring to EMPNO of EMP

table.

Alter table attendance add constraint empno_fk

Foreign key (empno) references emp(empno);
The above command succeeds only if EMPNO column in ATTENDANCE table
contains values which are existing in EMPNO column of EMP table. If any value
is not existing then the above statement fails and Oracle returns an error
indicating non compliant values.

Some points to remember for referential integrity

• You cannot delete a parent record if any existing child record is there. If
you have to first delete the child record before deleting the parent record.
In the above example you cannot delete row of employee no. 101 since
it’s child exist in the ATTENDANCE table. However, you can delete the
row of employee no. 103 since no child record exist for this employee in
ATTENDANCE table. If you define the FOREIGN KEY with ON DELETE
CASCADE option then you can delete the parent record and if any child
record exist it will be automatically deleted.

To define a foreign key constraint with ON DELETE CASCADE option

give the following command.

Alter table attendance add constraint empno_fk

Foreign key (empno) references emp(empno)
On delete cascade;

In Oracle 9i oracle has also given a new feature i.e. ON DELETE SET NULL .
That is it sets the value for foreign key to null whenever the parent record is
deleted.

To define a foreign key constraint with ON DELETE SET NULL option give
the following command.

Alter table attendance add constraint empno_fk

Foreign key (empno) references emp(empno)
On delete set null;

• You also cannot drop the parent table without first dropping the FOREIGN
KEY constraint from attendance table. However if you give CASCADE
CONSTRAINTS option in DROP TABLE statement then Oracle will
automatically drop the references and then drops the table.

CHECK

Use the check constraint to validate values entered into a column. For example
in the above ATTENDANCE table, the DAYS column should not contain any
value more than 31. For this you can define a CHECK constraint as given below

Alter table attendance add constraint dayscheck

Check (days <= 31);

Similarly if you want the salaries entered in to SAL column of employee table
should be between 1000 and 20000 then you can define a CHECK constraint on
EMP table as follows
Alter table EMP add constraint sal_check
Check (Sal between 1000 and 20000);

You can define as many check constraints on a single column as you want there
is no restrictions on number of check constraints.

UNIQUE KEY

Unique Key constraint is same as primary key i.e. it does not accept duplicate
values, except the following differences

 there can be only on Primary key per table. Whereas, you can have
as many Unique Keys per table as you want.

 Primary key does not accept NULL values whereas, unique key
columns can be left blank.

You can also refer to Unique key from foreign key of other tables.

On which columns you should put Unique Key Constraint ?

It depends on situations, first situation is suppose you have already defined a

Primary key constraint on one column and now you have another column which
also should not contain any duplicate values, Since a table can have only one
primary key, you can define Unique Key constraint on these columns. Second
situation is when a column should not contain any duplicate value but it should
also be left blank. For example in the EMP table IDNO is a good candidate for
Unique Key because all the IDNO’s are unique but some employees might not
have ID Card so you want to leave this column blank.

To define a UNIQUE KEY constraint on an existing table give the following

command.

Alter table emp add constraint id_unique unique (idno);

Again the above command will execute successfully if IDNO column contains
complying values otherwise you have to remove non complying values and then
add the constraint.

DEFAULT

You can also specify the DEFAULT value for columns i.e. when user does not
enter anything in that column then that column will have the default value. For
example in EMP table suppose most of the employees are from Hyderabad, then
you can put this as default value for CITY column. Then while inserting records if
user doesn’t enter anything in the CITY column then the city column will have
Hyderabad.

To define default value for columns create the table as given below
create table emp (empno number(5),
name varchar2(20),
sal number(10,2),
city varchar2(20) default ‘Hyd’);

Now, when user inserts record like this

insert into emp values (101,’Sami’,2000,’Bom’);

Then the city column will have value ‘Bom ‘. But when user inserts a record like
this

Insert into emp (empno,name,sal) values (102,’Ashi’,4000);

Then the city column will have value ‘Hyd’. Since it is the default.

Examples

Defining Constraints in CREATE TABLE statement.

create table emp (empno number(5) constraint emppk

Primary key,
ename varchar2(20) constraint namenn
not null,
sal number(10,2) constraint salcheck
check (sal between 1000 and 20000)
idno varchar2(20) constraint id_unique
unique );

create table attendance (empno number(5) constraint empfk

references emp (empno)
on delete cascade,
month varchar2(10),
days number(2) constraint dayscheck
check (days <= 31) );

The name of the constraints are optional. If you don’t define the names then
oracle generates the names randomly like ‘SYS_C1234’

Another way of defining constraint in CREATE TABLE statement.

create table emp (empno number(5),

ename varchar2(20) not null,
sal number(10,2),
idno varchar2(20),
constraint emppk Primary key (empno)
constraint salcheck
check (sal between 1000 and 20000)
constraint id_unique unique (idno) );
create table attendance (empno number(5),
month varchar2(10),
days number(2),
constraint empfk foreign key (empno)
references emp (empno)
on delete cascade
constraint dayscheck
check (days <= 31) );

Deferring Constraint Checks

You may wish to defer constraint checks on UNIQUE and FOREIGN keys if the
data you are working with has any of the following characteristics:

• Tables are snapshots

• Tables that contain a large amount of data being manipulated by another
application, which may or may not return the data in the same order
• Update cascade operations on foreign keys

When dealing with bulk data being manipulated by outside applications, you can
defer checking constraints for validity until the end of a transaction.

Ensure Constraints Are Created Deferrable

After you have identified and selected the appropriate tables, make sure their
FOREIGN, UNIQUE and PRIMARY key constraints are created deferrable. You
can do so by issuing a statement similar to the following:

create table attendance (empno number(5),

month varchar2(10),
days number(2),
constraint empfk foreign key (empno)
references emp (empno)
on delete cascade
DEFERRABLE
constraint dayscheck
check (days <= 31) );

Now give the following statement

Set constraint empfk deferred;

Update attendance set empno=104 where empno=102;
Insert into emp values (104,’Sami’,4000,’A123’);
Commit;

You can check for constraint violations before committing by issuing the SET
CONSTRAINTS ALL IMMEDIATE statement just before issuing the COMMIT. If
there are any problems with a constraint, this statement will fail and the
constraint causing the error will be identified. If you commit while constraints are
violated, the transaction will be rolled back and you will receive an error
message.

ENABLING AND DISABLING CONSTRIANTS.

You can enable and disable constraints at any time.

To enable and disable constraints the syntax is

ALTER TABLE <TABLE_NAME> ENABLE/DISABLE

CONSTRAINT <CONSTRAINT_NAME>

For example to disable primary key of EMP table give the following statement

Alter table emp disable constraint emppk;

And to enable it again, give the following statement

Alter table emp enable constraint emppk;

Dropping constraints.

You can drop constraint by using ALTER TABLE DROP constraint statement.
For example to drop Unique constraint from emp table, give the following
statement

Alter table emp drop constraint id_unique;

To drop primary key constraint from emp table.

Alter table emp drop constraint emppk;

The above statement will succeed only if the foreign key is first dropped
otherwise you have to first drop the foreign key and then drop the primary key. If
you want to drop primary key along with the foreign key in one statement then
CASCADE CONSTRAINT statement like this

Alter table emp drop constraint emppk cascade;

Viewing Information about constraints

To see information about constraints, you can query the following data dictionary
tables.
select * from user_constraints;
select * from user_cons_columns;