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Indexes are useful for many applications but come with some limitations. Consider the following SQL statement: SELECT first_name FROM people WHERE last_name = 'Smith';. 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).
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 ...
The use of efficient indexes on both primary and foreign keys can dramatically improve query performance. This is because B-tree indexes result in query times proportional to log(n) where n is the number of rows in a table and hash indexes result in constant time queries (no size dependency as long as the relevant part of the index fits into ...
Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio displaying a sample query plan. The Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio tool, which ships with Microsoft SQL Server, for example, shows this graphical plan when executing this two-table join example against an included sample database:
SQL statements also include the semicolon (";") statement terminator. Though not required on every platform, it is defined as a standard part of the SQL grammar. Insignificant whitespace is generally ignored in SQL statements and queries, making it easier to format SQL code for readability.
Database designers that use a surrogate key as the primary key for every table will run into the occasional scenario where they need to automatically retrieve the database-generated primary key from an SQL INSERT statement for use in other SQL statements. Most systems do not allow SQL INSERT statements to return row data. Therefore, it becomes ...
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.
The extracted relations are amended with foreign keys referring to the primary key of the relation which contained it. The process can be applied recursively to non-simple domains nested in multiple levels. [4] In this example, Customer ID is the primary key of the containing relations and will therefore be appended as foreign key to the new ...