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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.
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 ...
A key that can be used to uniquely identify a row in a table is called a primary key. Keys are commonly used to join or combine data from two or more tables. For example, an Employee table may contain a column named Location which contains a value that matches the key of a Location table. Keys are also critical in the creation of indexes, which ...
Usually one candidate key is chosen to be called the primary key and used in preference over the other candidate keys, which are then called alternate keys. A candidate key is a unique identifier enforcing that no tuple will be duplicated; this would make the relation into something else, namely a bag, by violating the basic definition of a set ...
A candidate key (or minimal superkey) is a superkey that can't be reduced to a simpler superkey by removing an attribute. [ 3 ] For example, in an employee schema with attributes employeeID , name , job , and departmentID , if employeeID values are unique then employeeID combined with any or all of the other attributes can uniquely identify ...
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. Unique keys can consist of multiple columns. Unique keys are also called alternate ...
Only S 1, S 2, S 3 and S 4 are candidate keys (that is, minimal superkeys for that relation) because e.g. S 1 ⊂ S 5, so S 5 cannot be a candidate key. Given that 2NF prohibits partial functional dependencies of non-prime attributes (i.e., an attribute that does not occur in any candidate key ) and that 3NF prohibits transitive functional ...
In database theory, a relation, as originally defined by E. F. Codd, [1] is a set of tuples (d 1,d 2,...,d n), where each element d j is a member of D j, a data domain. Codd's original definition notwithstanding, and contrary to the usual definition in mathematics, there is no ordering to the elements of the tuples of a relation.