Database Integrity: Entity and Referential Integrity Concepts Explored

This report delves into the crucial concepts of database integrity, with a specific focus on entity and referential integrity. It underscores the importance of these principles in maintaining data accuracy, consistency, and reliability within relational database systems. The report explains how entity integrity, enforced through primary keys, ensures that each row in a table is uniquely identifiable, and the role of foreign keys in establishing relationships between tables. It also explores the significance of referential integrity in enforcing constraints and preventing data inconsistencies. The report highlights the need for data integrity to enhance system performance and stability, and the importance of these concepts in modern database management practices. It also provides a brief overview of the implications of these concepts for database design and management, including how they impact data security and the overall efficiency of database systems.

Running head: ENTITY AND REFERENTIAL INTEGRITY IN DATABASES
Entity and Referential Integrity in Databases
Name of the Student
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Author’s note

1ENTITY AND REFERENTIAL INTEGRITY IN DATABASES
1. Introduction
Integrity is defined as the quality of possessing strong principles of morality and being
honest. Integrity is considered as an important aspect of the security of a database. This would
ensure that the right person would be able to view the information of the privileged company
(Rao and Selvamani 2015).
2. Importance of Entity Integrity and Referential Integrity within a Database
Entity integrity and referential integrity could be defined as two forms of the integrity of
the data, which are primarily important within the relational databases. The relational databases
have the potential to decompose the data storage into elements, which have to joined together,
which is meant to produce meaningful results (Coronel and Morris 2016).
Entity Integrity is an important property of a database system. In this process, the primary
keys are unique. The field of the primary key might be null. Hence, each row in the table would
possess a uniquely based identity. The values of the foreign key could be helpful in referencing
the values of the primary key. The entity integrity could also be defined as the mechanism, which
is provided by the system in order to maintain the primary keys. The primary key has the
responsibility to uniquely identify the different rows in a table (Tgalheim 2013).
The referential based integrity is also an important aspect because of the fact that the
foreign key should have a null based entry. This is possible to the point up to when the foreign
key would not be a part of the primary key of the table. Hence, it would be possible for any
attribute to not have a corresponding value. The implementation of the rule of referential
integrity would make it difficult and impossible for deleting a row within one table where the
primary key has a compulsory value of a foreign key that would be match with the value of

2ENTITY AND REFERENTIAL INTEGRITY IN DATABASES
another table. The referential integrity is also defined as the mechanism of the system in order to
provide and maintain the foreign keys. Any form of operation, which is able to produce a non-
null value of a foreign key without the need of matching the value of the primary key would be
rejected. The primary keys are also constrained with the help of the Referential Integrity (Aleksic
et al. 2013).
3. Conclusion
From the above discussion, it could be concluded that data is considered as an important
asset for any company. The data could be helpful for a company to give a push to their revenue.
Hence, the integrity of data is essential in order to increase stability and system performance.

3ENTITY AND REFERENTIAL INTEGRITY IN DATABASES
Reference
Aleksić, S., Ristić, S., Luković, I. and Čeliković, M., 2013. A design specification and a server
implementation of the inverse referential integrity constraints. Computer Science and
Information Systems, 10(1), pp.283-320.
Coronel, C. and Morris, S., 2016. Database systems: design, implementation, & management.
Cengage Learning.
Rao, R.V. and Selvamani, K., 2015. Data security challenges and its solutions in cloud
computing. Procedia Computer Science, 48, pp.204-209.
Thalheim, B., 2013. Entity-relationship modeling: foundations of database technology. Springer
Science & Business Media.