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In the relational model of databases, a primary key is a designated attribute that can reliably identify and distinguish between each individual record in a table.The database creator can choose an existing unique attribute or combination of attributes from the table (a natural key) to act as its primary key, or create a new attribute containing a unique ID that exists solely for this purpose ...
CREATE creates an object (a table, for example) in the database, e.g.: CREATE TABLE example ( column1 INTEGER , column2 VARCHAR ( 50 ), column3 DATE NOT NULL , PRIMARY KEY ( column1 , column2 ) ); ALTER modifies the structure of an existing object in various ways, for example, adding a column to an existing table or a constraint, e.g.:
As mentioned above, associative entities are implemented in a database structure using associative tables, which are tables that can contain references to columns from the same or different database tables within the same database. Concept of a mapping table. An associative (or junction) table maps two or more tables together by referencing the ...
Therefore, a relation can have multiple candidate keys, each with a different number of attributes. [2] Specific candidate keys are sometimes called primary keys, secondary keys or alternate keys. The columns in a candidate key are called prime attributes, [3] and a column that does not occur in any candidate key is called a non-prime attribute.
One of those keys per table may be designated the primary key; other keys are called alternate keys. Any key may consist of one or more attributes. For example, a Social Security Number might be a single attribute key for an employee; a combination of flight number and date might be a key consisting of two attributes for a scheduled flight.
For example, in Microsoft SQL Server, the key is retrieved via the SCOPE_IDENTITY() special function, while in SQLite the function is named last_insert_rowid(). Using a database-specific SELECT statement on a temporary table containing last inserted row(s). Db2 implements this feature in the following way:
A requirement of E. F. Codd in his seminal paper is that a primary key of an entity, or any part of it, can never take a null value. [1] The relational model states that every relation (or table ) must have an identifier, called the primary key (abbreviated PK), in such a way that every row of the same relation be identifiable by its content ...
Varchar fields can be of any size up to a limit, which varies by databases: an Oracle 11g database has a limit of 4000 bytes, [1] a MySQL 5.7 database has a limit of 65,535 bytes (for the entire row) [2] and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 has a limit of 8000 bytes (unless varchar(max) is used, which has a maximum storage capacity of 2 gigabytes). [3]