Referential Integrity

Referential integrity (RI) is an important feature of RDBMS. It helps to protect data from misuse and corruption.  However, in the modern world of multi-tier and distributed technologies it becomes questionable if referential integrity should be realized on a database level or is it a responsibility of a business layer. The answer to this question depends on the system design.  Usually database RI makes lots of sense in a data-centric application with one main database. More complex, distributed in space and time referential constraints can be better implemented within a business object framework.

db4o database does not provide full referential integrity support, rather it gives a user possibilities to implement RI on the application level. For an example of a referential integrity solution, see Referential Integrity.