Foreign Key

Foreign Key Constraints are used to model a parent/child relation in an entity relationship (ER) model:

SQL> CREATE TABLE team (
  id TINYINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT
, name VARCHAR(48) NOT NULL
, PRIMARY KEY (id)
);

SQL> CREATE TABLE employee (
  id SMALLINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT
, first_name VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL
, last_name VARCHAR(64) NOT NULL
, team_id BIGINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL
, PRIMARY KEY (id)
, CONSTRAINT `fk_employee_team` FOREIGN KEY (team_id)
  REFERENCES team (id) ON …

MySQL (InnoDB, PBXT, NDB, TokuDB) support Foreign Keys to show relatations between tables. Those relations can be enforced through Foreign Key Constraints.

Foreign Key Constraint Errors are always either a bug in your application (which should be fixed) or inconsistencies in your data (which should be fixed) or both (first fix the bug in the application, then clean-up your data).

Foreign Key Constraint Errors can be found with the following command:

SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS<br>G

SHOW ENGINE Syntax …