Should I Enforce Referential Integrity?

When you create a relationship between two tables, it is usually a good idea to enforce referential integrity. Referential integrity keeps data accurate and ensures that you don't accidentally change or delete related data in one table but not in the other.

Should you always enforce referential integrity?

Referential integrity should be enforced when the subdataset should NEVER contain records that do not have a corresponding master record. A good example is the order details of a sales order. You should not have any "orphaned" sales order details that don't have a corresponding master sales order record.

What is the goal for enforcing referential integrity?

The purpose of referential integrity is to prevent orphans and keep references in sync so that this hypothetical situation never occurs. You enforce referential integrity by enabling it for a table relationship. Once enforced, Access rejects any operation that violates referential integrity for that table relationship.