Data Integrity

What is Data Integrity (in computer networking)?

The correctness and consistency of data stored in a database. Maintaining integrity is essential, because a database is only useful if its contents can be retrieved and manipulated as expected.

For example, without data integrity, data could be input into the system and then be inaccessible. Data integrity must be enforced on the database server.

The following items are among those that should be verified:

• Individual field contents during insertion, updating, or deletion of data
• The values of one field relative to another (especially for primary keys) and of data in one table relative to another (especially for foreign keys)
• Successful completion of database transactions

Database systems employ many features to ensure data integrity. For example, Microsoft SQL Server 7 makes use of data types, constraints, rules, defaults, declarative referential integrity (DRI), stored procedures, and triggers. All these play a role in keeping the integrity of the database intact.