The ON DELETE clause allows you to define what happens to the records in the child table when the records in the parent table are deleted. If you omit the ON DELETE clause and delete a record in the parent table that has records in the child table refer to, MySQL will reject the deletion. In addition, MySQL also provides you with actions so that you can have other options such as ON DELETE CASCADE that lets MySQL to delete records in the child table that refers to a record in the parent table when the record in the parent table is deleted. If you don’t want the related records in the child table to be deleted, you use the ON DELETE SET NULL action instead. MySQL will set the foreign key column values in the child table to NULL when the record in the parent table is deleted, with a condition that the foreign key column in the child table must accept NULL values. Notice that if you use ON DELETE NO ACTION or ON DELETE RESTRICT action, MySQL will reject the deletion.