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SQL ON DELETE CASCADE, Which Way Does the Deletion Occur?

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How does cascade delete work SQL?

A foreign key with cascade delete means that if a record in the parent table is deleted, then the corresponding records in the child table will automatically be deleted. This is called a cascade delete in SQL Server.

What is the function of on delete cascade on delete cascade?

1 Answer. The explanation is: It is used to preserve referential integrity in the relation. When an attribute of a relation is the foreign key in another relation, deleting it causes referential integrity problems. The on delete cascade solves this problem by forcing us to delete the foreign key first.


Cascade will work when you delete something on table Courses. Any record on table BookCourses that has reference to table Courses will be deleted automatically.

But when you try to delete on table BookCourses only the table itself is affected and not on the Courses

follow-up question: why do you have CourseID on table Category?

Maybe you should restructure your schema into this,

CREATE TABLE Categories 
(
  Code CHAR(4) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
  CategoryName VARCHAR(63) NOT NULL UNIQUE
);

CREATE TABLE Courses 
(
  CourseID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
  BookID INT NOT NULL,
  CatCode CHAR(4) NOT NULL,
  CourseNum CHAR(3) NOT NULL,
  CourseSec CHAR(1) NOT NULL,
);

ALTER TABLE Courses
ADD FOREIGN KEY (CatCode)
REFERENCES Categories(Code)
ON DELETE CASCADE;

Here is a simple example for others visiting this old post, but is confused by the example in the question and the other answer:

Delivery -> Package (One -> Many)

CREATE TABLE Delivery(
    Id INT IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY,
    NoteNumber NVARCHAR(255) NOT NULL
)

CREATE TABLE Package(
    Id INT IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY,
    Status INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    Delivery_Id INT NOT NULL,
    CONSTRAINT FK_Package_Delivery_Id FOREIGN KEY (Delivery_Id) REFERENCES Delivery (Id) ON DELETE CASCADE
)

The entry with the foreign key Delivery_Id (Package) is deleted with the referenced entity in the FK relationship (Delivery).

So when a Delivery is deleted the Packages referencing it will also be deleted. If a Package is deleted nothing happens to any deliveries.