During an audit, it is discovered that several suppliers with standing orders have been deleted from the supplier master file.
Which of the following controls would have BEST prevented such an occurrence?
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A. B. C. D.A.
The BEST control that could have prevented the deletion of suppliers from the supplier master file is referential integrity.
Referential integrity is a database integrity constraint that ensures that relationships between tables remain consistent. Specifically, referential integrity ensures that a foreign key value in one table corresponds to a primary key value in another table.
In the context of the supplier master file, referential integrity would prevent the deletion of a supplier record if there are outstanding orders associated with that supplier. If a user attempted to delete a supplier with outstanding orders, the referential integrity constraint would prevent the deletion from occurring.
The other controls listed in the answers are not as effective in preventing the deletion of suppliers from the supplier master file.
A logical relationship check would compare the supplier file to other files to identify missing or duplicate data, but it would not prevent the deletion of a supplier record.
An existence check would verify that the supplier record exists but would not prevent its deletion if the user has the authority to delete records.
Table look-ups would verify that the data in the supplier master file matches data in other tables, but it would not prevent the deletion of a supplier record.
Therefore, referential integrity is the BEST control to prevent the deletion of suppliers from the supplier master file.