E' come dire che, quando cancelli una riga che viene referenziata, invece di beccarti un errore di integrità referenziale, propaghi la delete su tutti i figli di quella tabella.
Primo link che ho trovato:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infoce...oc/sqls292.htm
Use the ON DELETE CASCADE option to specify whether you want rows deleted in a child table when corresponding rows are deleted in the parent table. If you do not specify cascading deletes, the default behavior of the database server prevents you from deleting data in a table if other tables reference it.
If you specify this option, later when you delete a row in the parent table, the database server also deletes any rows associated with that row (foreign keys) in a child table. The principal advantage to the cascading-deletes feature is that it allows you to reduce the quantity of SQL statements you need to perform delete actions.