CREATE TABLE dept_20 
   (employee_id     NUMBER(4), 
    last_name       VARCHAR2(10), 
    job_id          VARCHAR2(9), 
    manager_id      NUMBER(4), 
    hire_date       DATE, 
    salary          NUMBER(7,2), 
    commission_pct  NUMBER(7,2), 
    department_id, 
   CONSTRAINT fk_deptno 
      FOREIGN  KEY (department_id) 
      REFERENCES  departments(department_id) ); 

The foreign key definitions in both variations of this statement omit the ON DELETE clause, causing Oracle to prevent the deletion of a department if any employee works in that department.

CREATE TABLE dept_20 
   (employee_id     NUMBER(4) PRIMARY KEY, 
    last_name       VARCHAR2(10), 
    job_id          VARCHAR2(9), 
    manager_id      NUMBER(4) CONSTRAINT fk_mgr
                    REFERENCES employees ON DELETE SET NULL, 
    hire_date       DATE, 
    salary          NUMBER(7,2), 
    commission_pct  NUMBER(7,2), 
    department_id   NUMBER(2)   CONSTRAINT fk_deptno 
                    REFERENCES departments(department_id) 
                    ON DELETE CASCADE ); 

Because of the first ON DELETE clause, if manager number 2332 is deleted from the employees table, then Oracle sets to null the value of manager_id for all employees in the dept_20 table who previously had manager 2332.

Because of the second ON DELETE clause, Oracle cascades any deletion of a department_id value in the departments table to the department_id values of its dependent rows of the dept_20 table. For example, if Department 20 is deleted from the departments table, then Oracle deletes all of the employees in Department 20 from the dept_20 table