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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 ...
To process this statement without an index the database software must look at the last_name column on every row in the table (this is known as a full table scan). With an index the database simply follows the index data structure (typically a B-tree ) until the Smith entry has been found; this is much less computationally expensive than a full ...
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 ...
Each column in an SQL table declares the type(s) that column may contain. ANSI SQL includes the following data types. [14] Character strings and national character strings. CHARACTER(n) (or CHAR(n)): fixed-width n-character string, padded with spaces as needed; CHARACTER VARYING(n) (or VARCHAR(n)): variable-width string with a maximum size of n ...
Many data description languages use a declarative syntax to define columns and data types. Structured Query Language (SQL), however, uses a collection of imperative verbs whose effect is to modify the schema of the database by adding, changing, or deleting definitions of tables or other elements.
An identity column differs from a primary key in that its values are managed by the server and usually cannot be modified. In many cases an identity column is used as a primary key; however, this is not always the case. It is a common misconception that an identity column will enforce uniqueness; however, this is not the case. If you want to ...
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 ...
Query by Example (QBE) is a database query language for relational databases. It was devised by Moshé M. Zloof at IBM Research during the mid-1970s, in parallel to the development of SQL. [1] It is the first graphical query language, using visual tables where the user would enter commands, example elements and conditions.