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A candidate key, or simply a key, of a relational database is any set of columns that have a unique combination of values in each row, with the additional constraint that removing any column could produce duplicate combinations of values. A candidate key is a minimal superkey, [1] i.e., a superkey that does not contain a smaller one. Therefore ...
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 ...
In database design, a composite key is a candidate key that consists of two or more attributes, [1] [2] [3] (table columns) that together uniquely identify an entity occurrence (table row). A compound key is a composite key for which each attribute that makes up the key is a foreign key in its own right.
Tuples in tuple sets handle the same role as rows in tables for relational databases. Tuples have an arbitrary number of fields, and fields do not need names. Every tuple in a database has one (unique not null) primary key and one or more secondary keys, which are enabled for immediate lookup via indexes.
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 relational database (RDB [1]) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. [2]A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured format using rows and columns.
MySQL (/ ˌ m aɪ ˌ ɛ s ˌ k juː ˈ ɛ l /) [6] is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). [6] [7] Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, [1] and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language.
In relational database management systems, a unique key is a candidate key. All the candidate keys of a relation can uniquely identify the records of the relation, but only one of them is used as the primary key of the relation. The remaining candidate keys are called unique keys because they can uniquely identify a record in a relation.