Dropping a table that is referenced by another table through a foreign key constraint
create table departments ( dept_id integer not null primary key, name varchar(50) not null ); create table employees ( emp_id integer not null primary key, dept_id integer not null references departments, last_name varchar(50) not null, first_name varchar(50) ); -- drop departments without manually dropping the foreign key from employees: drop table departments cascade;
Without this feature, the FK must be dropped manually (alter table employees drop foreign key ...;)