Final answer:
Data integrity is maintained by programmers and Database Management Systems (DBMS), which enforce integrity constraints and ensure the reliability of data within databases.
Step-by-step explanation:
The preservation of data integrity is generally considered to be the responsibility of the programmers who write the database programs or of the DBMS module that enforces integrity constraints. Data integrity involves maintaining the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of data throughout its lifecycle. Programmers must design databases and applications with mechanisms to ensure that the data remains intact, such as implementing primary and foreign key constraints, setting up valid data types and ranges, and using transactions to handle operations that involve multiple changes.
Database Management Systems (DBMS) play a crucial role in preserving data integrity by providing built-in features that enforce data rules and integrity constraints. For instance, constraints like UNIQUE, NOT NULL, and CHECK are used to enforce different integrity rules automatically. Thus, DBMS can roll back transactions that violate integrity constraints to maintain a dependable database state.