Contents Should we tell you the whole story? Of course, there is an
inevitable tension in trying to work like this. For example, in Chapter
16 we talk about referential integrity. There are - sentially six
different flavors of referential integrity but Access only s- ports four
of them (they are the most important ones however, so you aren't missing
out on too much). The problem is this. Should we tell you about the
other two? If we do, as an Access user you have every right to be
annoyed that we are telling you about a feature you can't use. On the
other hand, the six different types that we describe are part of the re-
tional world and this book is about that world - we are not trying to
teach you how to use Access, we are simply using Access to illustrate
the relational model. Ultimately we decided to risk your ire and to
describe all of the features of the relational model as we see it, even
if Access doesn't support all of them. One advantage of this approach is
that if you need to use a different database engine you will almost
certainly find the extra information useful. Incidentally, this is not
meant to imply that Access is somehow lacking as a relational database
engine. The reason we chose it for the first book is that it is such a
good example of a relational database tool.