Proper Deletion of Records for many to many relationships

Question

Hello Pros, Need advice for best practice on following scenario. This is just an example based on my actual needs.
People Table -> PeopleJoinAddress Table-> Address Table
  1 | John                 1 | 1                            
1 | Address 1
 2 |  Betty                2 | 1                             
ok, scenario is people can have many address's and address can be for many people(like a household)
When Deleting A Person , First Thought using cascading would delete address for other people, so should I consider looping with a while loop or cursor to delete just the join link if address exists for more then one, If not then delete
address also. Or should I consider doing that from application side and the just make call to simple  database Stored Procedures as needed 

Answer 1

CREATE TABLE Personnel
(emp_id CHAR(10) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
CREATE TABLE Addresses --- standard address numbers
(san CHAR(10) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
CREATE TABLE Households
(emp_id CHAR(10) NOT NULL 
 REFERENCES Personnel(emp_id)
 ON DELETE CASCADE,
 san CHAR(10) NOT NULL 
 REFERENCES Addresses(san)
 ON DELETE CASCADE,
PRIMARY KEY (emp_id, san),
>> When deleting an employee, first thought using cascading would delete address for other people, .. <<
No. You delete the employee in the Personnel table, its reference in the Households is cascaded but the Addresses table is not touched. 
>> so should I consider looping with a while loop or cursor to delete just the join link [sic] if address exists for more than one, If not then delete address also. <<
Saying “loops” and “cursors” to an SQL programmer is like saying “fried babies” to a Vegan – wrong in so many ways :) Also RDBMS has no links! That is a term for pointers used in 1970's Network Databases. 
An address can have nobody living there and we are fine. If you want to clean out empty addresses, you can do this with a trigger, a garbage keeping procedure that you run once a year or use VIEWs. What is the best business rule for you? 
>> Or should I consider doing that from application side and the just make call to simple  database Stored Procedures as needed  <<
No. Which application? You could have hundreds of them.  A business rule should be enforced one way, one time and in one place.  
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