Answer-first summary for fast verification
Answer: All Delta Lake transactions are ACID compliant against a single table, and Databricks does not enforce foreign key constraints.
In Databricks Runtime 15.2+, you can define primary key and foreign key constraints in Unity Catalog tables. However, these constraints are not enforced at runtime — they are informational and can be used for query optimization (especially with the RELY option). ACID guarantees still apply only to single-table transactions, so multi-table inserts are not atomic. Data integrity must still be enforced in ETL pipelines or via Delta Live Tables data quality rules.
Author: LeetQuiz Editorial Team
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A junior data engineer is transitioning a workload from a relational database to the Databricks Lakehouse. The source system employs a star schema with foreign key constraints and multi-table inserts to enforce data validation during writes.
What factor should the engineer prioritize when making decisions during this migration in Databricks Runtime 15.2 or later?
A
Databricks enforces primary and foreign key constraints at runtime, so no additional referential integrity checks are required.
B
Databricks supports defining primary and foreign key constraints in Unity Catalog tables, but they are not enforced by the engine; ACID guarantees apply only to single-table transactions.
C
Multi-table inserts in Databricks are atomic, so referential integrity is always preserved without extra logic.
D
All Delta Lake transactions are ACID compliant against a single table, and Databricks does not enforce foreign key constraints.
