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Status Submitted
Workspace Informix
Components Informix Server
Created by Guest
Created on Mar 25, 2024

Support for ON DELETE SET NULL and ON UPDATE CASCADE clauses in FOREIGN KEY statements

A customer wanted to use a construction like

ALTER TABLE detail_table
ADD CONSTRAINT FOREIGN KEY (link_column)
REFERENCES master_table
ON DELETE SET NULL;


so that referencing values would be updated to NULL automatically if a parent row was deleted.

That syntax is available in some database servers - such as DB2 - but not Informix:
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2/11.5?topic=constraints-foreign-key-referential

Some other databases - but not Informix or DB2 - also have

ON UPDATE CASCADE


so that referencing values would be updated to the new value automatically if the parent row was updated.

That has separately been requested for DB2:
https://ibm-data-and-ai.ideas.ibm.com/ideas/DB24LUW-I-62

Could these both be added in a future Informix release?

The work around meanwhile is to have a trigger on the primary table with constraints deferred:
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/informix-servers/14.10?topic=statements-set-transaction-mode-statement

Needed By Quarter