Triggers enforce the relationship between the parent and child tables. Triggers are used to enforce business rules during database modification. For example, if the business rule is “no order records for active customers can be deleted,” a trigger can be used to control the deletion of records from the ORDER table.

System Architect automatically generates update, insert and delete triggers based on the properties of the relationship or constraint. The names of automatically-generated triggers are prefaced with it_, ut_, and dt_.

All triggers are related to specific tables; a trigger cannot be “free-standing” in the database. Depending on the DBMS, triggers can be programmed to fire after, during or instead of an action.

User-defined triggers are added to the project dictionary through the trigger editor. Trigger Templates are included with System Architect and can be used in whole or part with triggers you write. Access the templates through the Dictionary menu > Trigger Template.