Terminology - Teradata Vantage

Teradata® VantageCloud Lake
Deployment
VantageCloud
Edition
Lake
Product
Teradata Vantage
Published
January 2023
ft:locale
en-US
ft:lastEdition
2024-12-11
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Term Definition
Child Table A table where the referential constraints are defined.

Child table and referencing table are synonyms.
Parent Table The table referenced by a child table.

Parent table and referenced table are synonyms.
Primary Key

UNIQUE Alternate Key

 A unique identifier for a row of a table.
Foreign Key A column set in the child table that is also the primary key (or a UNIQUE alternate key) in the parent table.

Foreign keys can consist of up to 64 different columns.
Referential Constraint A constraint defined on a column set or a table for referential integrity.

For example, consider the following table definition:

CREATE TABLE A
(A1 CHAR(10) REFERENCES B (B1), /* 1 */
 A2 INTEGER
FOREIGN KEY (A1,A2) REFERENCES C /* 2 */
PRIMARY INDEX (A1));
This CREATE TABLE statement specifies the following referential integrity constraints.
  • Constraint 1 is defined at the column level. Implicit foreign key A1 references the parent key B1 in table B.
  • Constraint 2 is defined at the table level.

    Explicit composite foreign key (A1, A2) implicitly references the UPI (or a USI) of parent table C, which must be two columns, the first typed CHAR(10) and the second typed INTEGER.

    Both parent table columns must also be defined as NOT NULL.