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ORA-02273: this unique/primary key is referenced by some foreign keys

A primary key cannot be dropped as long as foreign keys reference it. An attempt to do so results in the error message ORA-02273: this unique/primary key is referenced by some foreign keys.

This is demonstrated with the following simple snippets.

Create two tables with a primary key-foreign key relation:

create table tq84_P (
    id  integer,
    txt varchar2(10) not null,
    constraint tq84_P_pk primary key (id)
);

create table tq84_C (
    id_p   not null,
    val    number(5,2),
    constraint tq84_C_fk foreign key (id_p) references tq84_P
);

The following statement throws ORA-02273: this unique/primary key is referenced by some foreign keys:

alter table tq84_P drop constraint tq84_P_pk;

Cleaning up:

drop table tq84_C;
drop table tq84_P;

ORA-02273: this unique/primary key is referenced by some foreign keys

See also