> I would disagree a small bit here, I would say that the term RI is often
> misused and this discussion is an example of its misuse. Referential
> Integrity is a relational database issue and only a relational database
> issue. This discussion is talking about business rules that relate to relationships.

No, actually, we don't disagree at all. My point was that the term RI is (mis)used for business logic issues. So we very much agree here. It seems one of the reasons for this entire thread is that business rules are defined in the RI (which doesn't represent any technical difficulties when using the RI builder).

> A somewhat rhetorical question, "is it possible for the business rules to be
> intact when the databse contains an invlaid reference somewhere?" I know it
> is true that the database can be intact while a business rule is not valid,
> but what about the other way around?

I think so. What about child records that don't have a parent? In this case, they would never show up anywhere, therefore, the business rules aren't violated, but the database in itself may be corrupt (maybe there is a parent that only has a corrupt PK, you see...)

Markus