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In SQL, the unique keys have a UNIQUE constraint assigned to them in order to prevent duplicates (a duplicate entry is not valid in a unique column). Alternate keys may be used like the primary key when doing a single-table select or when filtering in a where clause, but are not typically used to join multiple tables.
An example of a data table column with low-cardinality would be a CUSTOMER table with a column named NEW_CUSTOMER. This column would contain only two distinct values: Y or N, denoting whether the customer was new or not. Since there are only two possible values held in this column, its cardinality type would be referred to as low-cardinality. [2]
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 ...
Each row in a table has its own unique key. Rows in a table can be linked to rows in other tables by adding a column for the unique key of the linked row (such columns are known as foreign keys). Codd showed that data relationships of arbitrary complexity can be represented by a simple set of concepts. [2]
The unique index serves two purposes: (i) to enforce entity integrity, since primary key data must be unique across rows and (ii) to quickly search for rows when queried. Since surrogate keys replace a table's identifying attributes—the natural key —and since the identifying attributes are likely to be those queried, then the query ...
Without an ORDER BY clause, the order of rows returned by an SQL query is undefined. The DISTINCT keyword [5] eliminates duplicate data. [6] The following example of a SELECT query returns a list of expensive books. The query retrieves all rows from the Book table in which the price column contains a value greater
A foreign key is a set of attributes in a table that refers to the primary key of another table, linking these two tables. In the context of relational databases, a foreign key is subject to an inclusion dependency constraint that the tuples consisting of the foreign key attributes in one relation, R, must also exist in some other (not necessarily distinct) relation, S; furthermore that those ...
A table (called the referencing table) can refer to a column (or a group of columns) in another table (the referenced table) by using a foreign key. The referenced column(s) in the referenced table must be under a unique constraint, such as a primary key. Also, self-references are possible (not fully implemented in MS SQL Server though [5]).