Microsoft Interview Question for Software Engineer / Developers






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A foreign key is a field (or fields) that points to the primary key of another table. The purpose of the foreign key is to ensure referential integrity of the data. In other words, only values that are supposed to appear in the database are permitted.

For example, say we have two tables, a CUSTOMER table that includes all customer data, and an ORDERS table that includes all customer orders. The constraint here is that all orders must be associated with a customer that is already in the CUSTOMER table. In this case, we will place a foreign key on the ORDERS table and have it relate to the primary key of the CUSTOMER table. This way, we can ensure that all orders in the ORDERS table are related to a customer in the CUSTOMER table. In other words, the ORDERS table cannot contain information on a customer that is not in the CUSTOMER table.

- zhaowang.job August 25, 2008 | Flag Reply
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I think a foreign key can also point to a unique key not necessary primary key.

- viczhang1990 February 14, 2013 | Flag


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