Populate a self-referencing table

Last modified: October 8, 2024

The following example illustrates a table that has foreign key references to itself:

CREATE TABLE dbo.references_in_table (
ID int NOT NULL,
clm_ref1 int NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (ID)
)
ON [PRIMARY]
GO

ALTER TABLE dbo.references_in_table WITH NOCHECK
ADD FOREIGN KEY (clm_ref1) REFERENCES dbo.references_in_table (ID)
GO

When trying to populate a table that has a self-referencing foreign key, you will encounter the following warning:

The table contains the self-referencing foreign key. It is recommended to enable the Disable Foreign Key option

In such situations, we recommend selecting the Disable Foreign Key option in the Data Generator project settings.