Cfrgtkky

I have a Table A that is referenced to by Table B, and Table C has references to Table B.

Such that:

• Table A (pk: id)


• Table B (pk: id, fk: A_id)


• Table C (fk: B_id)

Every foreign key has a constraint ON_DELETE:CASCADE, however if I attempted to delete Table A - it refuses to. This is happening because rows in Table B have foreign keys pointing to Table A, and Table C has rows pointing to Table B.

I'm confident that I can resolve this issue by deleting Table B first, and then deleting Table A. However, would someone explain why this DELETE isn't possible? Surely, it should be able to perform a function of going down a 'hierarchy' of foreign keys and deleting everything in order?

Thanks

In ON DELETE CASCADE operation, if a parent row is deleted, it will first delete the child row and then the parent row so as to ensure that no references are left as foreign key

As for your question, since Table B is referring to Table A 's primary key and Table C is referring to Table B's primary key, the relationship for which on delete cascade should work is just a parent child and not beyond.