MS SQL Server - Create table with FOREIGN KEY

In this article, we would like to show you how to create a table with FOREIGN KEY in MS SQL Server.

Quick solution:

CREATE TABLE [table1_name] (
    [column1] DATA_TYPE,
    [column2] DATA_TYPE,
    [columnN] DATA_TYPE,
    PRIMARY KEY ([column_name]),
    FOREIGN KEY ([column_name]) REFERENCES [table2_name]([reference_column])
);

Note:

Go to the official documentation to see available DATA_TYPES.

Practical example

In this example, we will create two tables:

• groups table with two columns:
  • id- with PRIMARY KEY constraint
  • group_name

and users table with three columns:

• id - with PRIMARY KEY constraint
• username
• group_id - which will be our FOREIGN KEY with groups.id column reference

Query:

CREATE TABLE [groups] (
	[id] INT IDENTITY(1,1),
	[group_name] VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
	PRIMARY KEY ([id])
);

CREATE TABLE [users] (
	[id] INT IDENTITY(1,1),
	[username] VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
	[group_id] INT,
	PRIMARY KEY ([id]),
	FOREIGN KEY ([group_id]) REFERENCES [groups]([id])
);

Result:

As we see in the second picture, the group_id column from users table has FOREIGN KEY constraint which refers to the id column from groups table with PRIMARY KEY constraint.

References

• MS SQL Server Data Types