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A surrogate key (or synthetic key, pseudokey, entity identifier, factless key, or technical key [citation needed]) in a database is a unique identifier for either an entity in the modeled world or an object in the database. The surrogate key is not derived from application data, unlike a natural (or business) key. [1]
A natural key differs from a surrogate key which has no meaning outside the database itself and is not based on real-world observation or intended as a statement about the reality being modelled. A natural key therefore provides a certain data quality guarantee whereas a surrogate does not. It is common for elements of data to have several keys ...
The Foreign Key serves as the link, and therefore the connection, between the two related tables in this sample database. In a relational database, a candidate key uniquely identifies each row of data values in a database table. A candidate key comprises a single column or a set of columns in a single database table. No two distinct rows or ...
A relational database (RDB [1]) ... A surrogate key is an artificial attribute assigned to an object which uniquely identifies it (for instance, in a table of ...
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 ...
For referential integrity to hold in a relational database, any column in a base table that is declared a foreign key can only contain either null values or values from a parent table's primary key or a candidate key. [2] In other words, when a foreign key value is used it must reference a valid, existing primary key in the parent table.
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 ...
A candidate key is a minimal superkey, [1] i.e., a superkey that does not contain a smaller one. 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.