# Referential Integrity needs to be considered!

**URL:** <https://community.nextw.com/t/referential-integrity-needs-to-be-considered/1644>\
**Category:** How Tos\
**Created:** [January 26, 2026, 10:30pm UTC](https://community.nextw.com/t/referential-integrity-needs-to-be-considered/1644 "2026-01-26T22:30:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ian.p](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.nextw.com/ian.p/32/427_2.png) [@ian.p](https://community.nextw.com/u/ian.p)\
**Post date:** [January 26, 2026, 10:30pm UTC](https://community.nextw.com/t/referential-integrity-needs-to-be-considered/1644/1 "2026-01-26T22:30:25Z")

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Referential Integrity can eliminate ‘bad pointers’ where the deletion of a referenced record causes an invalid table lookup on another table.

As an SD, we recommend that part of the development process definition-of-done include:

- launching the `Referential Integrity` application
- executing the `Reload Data` list form action
- for any results applicable to the work being done, choose to `Enforce` or `Turn Off` referential integrity for the relevant table lookups.
- deliver the `Referential Integrity` changes via a metadata manifest and promote to production

When set to `Enforced`, this will prevent your customers from inadvertently being able to delete referenced records by accident. Unwinding an accidental deletion, if possible, is difficult and time consuming and usually requires administrator intervention. Protect against that possibility by making an intentional decision to configure Referential Integrity for all your table lookups.

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**Author:** ![melanie.spence](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.nextw.com/melanie.spence/32/332_2.png) [@melanie.spence](https://community.nextw.com/u/melanie.spence)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 1:56pm UTC](https://community.nextw.com/t/referential-integrity-needs-to-be-considered/1644/2 "2026-02-17T13:56:08Z")

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Hello - we have had the inability to move Referential Integrity in our patching so we are unable to enforce it: **#434881**

Should all table lookups have referential integrity activated? If so, is there a setting or way to have it enforced by default?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ian.p](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.nextw.com/ian.p/32/427_2.png) [@ian.p](https://community.nextw.com/u/ian.p)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 3:01pm UTC](https://community.nextw.com/t/referential-integrity-needs-to-be-considered/1644/3 "2026-02-17T15:01:20Z")

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TLs should have it activated if you don’t want to risk creating a bad pointer to another record by deleting that other record. I’ve seen a few use cases where it’s OK to do that where the record being pointed to might be short-lived and it going away is expected, but they’re the minority.

There is no way to enforce it by default.