Hugo Kornelis conclues a mini-series on foreign key constraints:
Welcome to part fourteen of the plansplaining series, where I wrap up the mini-series on how simple foreign keys have huge effects on execution plans for data modifications.
We already looked at inserting data in the referencing (child) table, and at deleting data from the referenced (parent) table as well as updates in the child table. We did not and will not look at deleting from the child table or inserting in the parent table: those operations can by default never violate the foreign key constraint, so no additional logic is needed.
So that means there is only one thing left to explore: updating the parent. Perhaps surprisingly, this is actually quite complex, so it warrants an entire post of its own.
Read on to see why.