What happens if I deploy items containing bad references?

References that cannot be resolved are called bad references. The effects of introducing bad references into a database are hard to predict: they will depend on the particularities of the managed system and the items involved.

In some very limited scenarios, introducing bad references will not prove catastrophic. For example, references from default settings that are no longer used won't necessarily invalidate configuration. Nevertheless, it stands to reason that, at the very least, bad references will impede performance. They should be identified and eliminated as part of routine configuration management.