Beginning Microsoft SQL Server 2008 ... - S3 Tech Training

Chapter 6: Constraints
166
This is going to expose you to one of the hassles of relational database work — dependency chains. A
dependency chain exists when you have something that is, in turn, dependent on something else, which
may yet be dependent on something else, and so on. There’s really nothing you can do about this. It’s
just something that comes along with database work. You have to start at the top of the chain and work
your way down to what you need inserted. Fortunately, the records you need are often already there,
save one or two dependency levels.
OK, so in order to get our row into our OrderDetails table, we must also have a record already in the
Orders table. Unfortunately, getting a row into the Orders table requires that we have one in the Customers
table (remember that foreign key we built on Orders?). So, let’s take care of it a step at a time:
INSERT INTO Customers -- Our Customer.
-- Remember that CustomerNo is
-- an Identity column
VALUES
(‘Billy Bob’‘s Shoes’,
‘123 Main St.’,
‘ ‘,
‘Vancouver’,
‘WA’,
‘98685’,
‘Billy Bob’,
‘(360) 555-1234’,
‘931234567’,
GETDATE()
);
Now we have a customer, so let’s select against the record we just inserted to be sure:
Customer No 1
Customer Name Billy Bob’s Shoes
Address 1 123 Main Street
Address 2
City Vancouver
State WA
Zip 98685
Contact Billy Bob
Phone (360) 555-1234
FedIDNo 931234567
DateInSystem 2000-07-1021:17:00