Foreign Keys

Question

Hi , Can somebody please, let me know the best way to delete a table referenced by a foreign keys.

Thanks, Chris

Answer 1

Remove the foreign key constraint and then delete the table once no-one is forced to recognize it. If the column in the second table (the one not being deleted) is not used elsewhere, then you should probably delete the whole column after removing the constraint.

Answer 2

You need to remove the constraint before you're allowed to delete the table referenced by it. SQL Server uses the following syntax:

ALTER TABLE <table_name> DROP FOREIGN KEY <foreignkey_name>

Keep in mind that the constraint exists on the table that references the one you want to delete so that's the table you should be altering.

Answer 3

Is the intended goal to orphan those records and never use the foreign key again? If so the method mentioned before about disabling the key is fine, otherwise you may want to instead delete the records referencing the table you want to delete first (or update the to point to a more appropriate record, or NULL if that makes sense in this case). I seem to be coming at this from a different direction than others, are you sure the foreign key is pointless, and if so why not just remove it? At some point someone wanted to constraint this behavior, before just disabling constraints I make sure I understand their purpose and have a good justification for bypassing those safeguards.

Answer 4

by using On Delete Cascade

Answer 5

Do NOT delete a table with foreign key constraints without considering the impact on the foreign key tables. Let me explain the impact of simply deleting the foreign key and then the table with an example.

Consider two tables - parts and orderdetails. There is a foreign key constraint that says a part must exist before it can be put into the orderdetails table. What is stored in the orderdetail table is the id for the part from the parts table, not the part name or description. Suppose you drop the foreign key and then drop the parts table. Now all the data in the orderdetail table is totally useless because you have no way of knowing what the part ordered was. This would include orders not yet shipped and orders that the customer might call and ask questions about. Further you now have no way to recreate that data except by restoring a backup (hope you have one).

Further suppose you want to drop the table and recreate it to make a change to the table. Then reload the information and put the foreign key back on. In this case you should probaly use alter table instead of drop and recreate but if you don't you may end up with id numbers that are not the same as they were originally and thus now the orders will reference the wrong ids. This can be done safely but you would have to do it very carefully and with a lot of thought as to the consequences.