What is a foreign key, and what is it used for?

A foreign key is used to establish relationships between relations in the relational model. Technically, a foreign key is a column (or columns) appearing in one relation that is (are) the primary key of another table. Although there might be exceptions, the values in the foreign key columns usually must correspond to values existing in the set of primary key values. This correspondence necessity is created in a database using a referential integrity constraint on the foreign key.