What is the consequence of corrupted foreign key values in a transaction table?

Corrupted foreign key values in a transaction table have a significant impact on data integrity and relationships within the database. When foreign keys, which link transactions to their corresponding master data (like customer records or product details), become corrupted, the associations between these pieces of data can be broken. This means that specific transaction records may no longer be able to relate accurately to the master records they should connect to, leading to incomplete or incorrect data retrieval.

For example, if a foreign key referencing a customer's data is corrupted, queries that attempt to pull customer-related transactions will fail to return appropriate results, as the system can no longer validate which master record corresponds to the transaction. This disrupts data consistency and can skew reporting and analysis, impacting decision-making processes based on that data.

The other options touch on potential consequences of data issues but do not encapsulate the primary and immediate consequence of corrupted foreign key values, which is the loss of association between transactions and master data. Thus, option A accurately identifies the critical consequence of this corruption.