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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 ...
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 doesn't contain a smaller one. Therefore ...
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 ...
Every relation/table has a primary key, this being a consequence of a relation being a set. [21] A primary key uniquely specifies a tuple within a table. While natural attributes (attributes used to describe the data being entered) are sometimes good primary keys, surrogate keys are often used instead. A surrogate key is an artificial attribute ...
A key that may become the primary key. Primary The key that is selected as the primary key. Only one key within an entity is selected to be the primary key. This is the key that is allowed to migrate to other entities to define the relationships that exist among the entities.
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 ...
Specify primary keys – Choose each table's primary key. The primary key is a column, or a set of columns, that is used to uniquely identify each row. An example might be Product ID or Order ID. Set up the table relationships – Look at each table and decide how the data in one table is related to the data in other tables. Add fields to ...
A "primary key" assigns a field to its "special order table". For example, the "Doctor Last Name" field might be assigned as a primary key of the Doctor table with all people having same last name organized alphabetically according to the first three letters of their first name.