Computer Science
In computer science, references are data types that refer to an object elsewhere in memory and are used to construct a wide variety of data structures, such as linked lists. Generally, a reference is a value that enables a program to directly access the particular data item. Most programming languages support some form of reference.
The C++ programming language has a specific type of reference also referred to as a "reference"; see reference (C++).
The notion of reference is also important in relational database theory; see referential integrity.
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