Oracle (ORA-02270) : no matching unique or primary key for this column-list error

Question

I have two tables, Table JOB and Table USER, here is the structure

 CREATE TABLE JOB
 (
   ID       NUMBER NOT NULL ,
   USERID   NUMBER,
   CONSTRAINT B_PK PRIMARY KEY ( ID ) ENABLE
 );

 CREATE TABLE USER
 (
   ID       NUMBER NOT NULL ,
   CONSTRAINT U_PK PRIMARY KEY ( ID ) ENABLE
 );

Now, i want to add foreign key constraint to JOB referencing to USER table, as

Alter Table JOB ADD CONSTRAINT FK_USERID FOREIGN KEY(USERID) REFERENCES USER(ID);

this throws Oracle (ORA-02270) : no matching unique or primary key for this column-list error, doing some investigation it appears that we need to have either unique key or primary key constraint on USERID but I cannot have that as one USERID can have multiple JOBS associated with him, any thoughts or suggestions on how to fix this issue?

Researched ORA-02270 and SO related question

Answer 1

The ORA-2270 error is a straightforward logical error: it happens when the columns we list in the foreign key do not match a primary key or unique constraint on the parent table. Common reasons for this are

• the parent lacks a PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE constraint altogether
• the foreign key clause references the wrong column in the parent table
• the parent table's constraint is a compound key and we haven't referenced all the columns in the foreign key statement.

Neither appears to be the case in your posted code. But that's a red herring, because your code does not run as you have posted it. Judging from the previous edits I presume you are not posting your actual code but some simplified example. Unfortunately in the process of simplification you have eradicated whatever is causing the ORA-2270 error.

SQL> CREATE TABLE JOB
 (
   ID       NUMBER NOT NULL ,
   USERID   NUMBER,
   CONSTRAINT B_PK PRIMARY KEY ( ID ) ENABLE
 );  2    3    4    5    6  

Table created.

SQL> CREATE TABLE USER
 (
   ID       NUMBER NOT NULL ,
   CONSTRAINT U_PK PRIMARY KEY ( ID ) ENABLE
 );  2    3    4    5  
CREATE TABLE USER
             *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00903: invalid table name


SQL> 

That statement failed because USER is a reserved keyword so we cannot name a table USER. Let's fix that:

SQL> 1
  1* CREATE TABLE USER
SQL> a s
  1* CREATE TABLE USERs
SQL> l
  1  CREATE TABLE USERs
  2   (
  3     ID       NUMBER NOT NULL ,
  4     CONSTRAINT U_PK PRIMARY KEY ( ID ) ENABLE
  5*  )
SQL> r
  1  CREATE TABLE USERs
  2   (
  3     ID       NUMBER NOT NULL ,
  4     CONSTRAINT U_PK PRIMARY KEY ( ID ) ENABLE
  5*  )

Table created.

SQL> Alter Table JOB ADD CONSTRAINT FK_USERID FOREIGN KEY(USERID) REFERENCES USERS(ID);   

Table altered.

SQL> 

And lo! No ORA-2270 error.

Alas, there's not much we can do here to help you further. You have a bug in your code. You can post your code here and one of us can spot your mistake. Or you can check your own code and discover it for yourself.

---

Note: an earlier version of the code defined HOB.USERID as VARCHAR2(20). Because USER.ID is defined as a NUMBER the attempt to create a foreign key would have hurl a different error:

ORA-02267: column type incompatible with referenced column type

An easy way to avoid mismatches is to use foreign key syntax to default the datatype of the column:

CREATE TABLE USERs
 (
   ID    number NOT NULL ,
   CONSTRAINT U_PK PRIMARY KEY ( ID ) ENABLE
 );

CREATE TABLE JOB
 (
   ID       NUMBER NOT NULL ,
   USERID   constraint FK_USERID references users,
   CONSTRAINT B_PK PRIMARY KEY ( ID ) ENABLE
 );

Answer 2

The data type in the Job table (Varchar2(20)) does not match the data type in the USER table (NUMBER NOT NULL).

Answer 3

In my case the problem was cause by a disabled PK.

In order to enable it:

1. I look for the Constraint name with:

   SELECT * FROM USER_CONS_COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'referenced_table_name';

2. Then I took the Constraint name in order to enable it with the following command:

   ALTER TABLE table_name ENABLE CONSTRAINT constraint_name;

Answer 4

The scheme is correct, User.ID must be the primary key of User, Job.ID should be the primary key of Job and Job.UserID should be a foreign key to User.ID. Also, your commands appear to be syntactically correct.

So what could be wrong? I believe you have at least a Job.UserID which doesn't have a pair in User.ID. For instance, if all values of User.ID are: 1,2,3,4,6,7,8 and you have a value of Job.UserID of 5 (which is not among 1,2,3,4,6,7,8, which are the possible values of UserID), you will not be able to create your foreign key constraint. Solution:

delete from Job where UserID in (select distinct User.ID from User);

will delete all jobs with nonexistent users. You might want to migrate these to a copy of this table which will contain archive data.

Answer 5

Most Probably when you have a missing Primary key is not defined from parent table. then It occurs.

Like Add the primary key define in parent as below:

ALTER TABLE "FE_PRODUCT" ADD CONSTRAINT "FE_PRODUCT_PK" PRIMARY KEY ("ID") ENABLE;

Hope this will work.

Answer 6

I faced the same issue in my scenario as follow:

I created textbook table first with

create table textbook(txtbk_isbn varchar2(13)
primary key,txtbk_title varchar2(40),
txtbk_author varchar2(40) );

Then chapter table:

create table chapter(txtbk_isbn varchar2(13),chapter_title varchar2(40), constraint pk_chapter primary key(txtbk_isbn,chapter_title), constraint chapter_txtbook foreign key (txtbk_isbn) references textbook (txtbk_isbn));

Then topic table:

create table topic(topic_id varchar2(20) primary key,topic_name varchar2(40));

Now when I wanted to create a relationship called chapter_topic between chapter (having composite primary key) and topic (having single column primary key), I faced issue with following query:

create table chapter_topic(txtbk_isbn varchar2(13),chapter_title varchar2(40),topic_id varchar2(20), primary key (txtbk_isbn, chapter_title, topic_id), foreign key (txtbk_isbn) references textbook(txtbk_isbn), foreign key (chapter_title) references chapter(chapter_title), foreign key (topic_id) references topic (topic_id));

The solution was to refer to composite foreign key as below:

create table chapter_topic(txtbk_isbn varchar2(13),chapter_title varchar2(40),topic_id varchar2(20), primary key (txtbk_isbn, chapter_title, topic_id), foreign key (txtbk_isbn, chapter_title) references chapter(txtbk_isbn, chapter_title), foreign key (topic_id) references topic (topic_id));

Thanks to APC post in which he mentioned in his post a statement that:

Common reasons for this are
- the parent lacks a constraint altogether
- the parent table's constraint is a compound key and we haven't referenced all the columns in the foreign key statement.
- the referenced PK constraint exists but is DISABLED

Answer 7

We have following script for create new table:

CREATE TABLE new_table
(
id                     NUMBER(32) PRIMARY KEY,
referenced_table_id    NUMBER(32)    NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT fk_new_table_referenced_table_id
    FOREIGN KEY (referenced_table_id)
        REFERENCES referenced_table (id)
);

and we were getting this error on execute:

[42000][2270] ORA-02270: no matching unique or primary key for this column-list

The issue was due to disabled primary key of referenced table in our case. We have enabled it by

ALTER TABLE referenced_table ENABLE PRIMARY KEY USING INDEX;

after that we created new table using first script without any issues

Answer 8

When running this command:

ALTER TABLE MYTABLENAME MODIFY CONSTRAINT MYCONSTRAINTNAME_FK ENABLE;

I got this error:

ORA-02270: no matching unique or primary key for this column-list
02270. 00000 -  "no matching unique or primary key for this column-list"
*Cause:    A REFERENCES clause in a CREATE/ALTER TABLE statement
          gives a column-list for which there is no matching unique or primary
          key constraint in the referenced table.
*Action:   Find the correct column names using the ALL_CONS_COLUMNS

The referenced table has a primary key constraint with matching type. The root cause of this error, in my case, was that the primary key constraint was disabled.