Ensuring Data Integrity

You probably have heard the popular dictum "Garbage in, garbage out." It means that you cannot get good results based on shaky input. So, it is no small wonder that data integrity is crucial to the success of a database application.

Data integrity guarantees the consistency of data stored in the database.

You will see how you can have SQL Server enforce data integrity for you by specifying the rules that need to be followed. There are three types of data integrity:

  • Entity integrity

  • Domain integrity

  • Referential integrity

Entity Integrity

Entity integrity, sometimes also called table integrity, requires that all rows in a table have a unique identifier. You can have SQL Server (or any other commercial database system for ...

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