Which makes for a better primary key: natural data points or meaningless values? Database developers have strong opinions on this facet of primary key design. This article settles the debate once and ...

In a relational database approach, regardless of whether one is considering persisted data or transitory query results, almost everything is viewed as a logical table. Associations between these ...

10 tips for choosing between a surrogate and natural primary key Your email has been sent The superiority of surrogate versus natural keys is a hotly debated topic among database developers. Susan ...

The column (field) in a relational database that uniquely identifies the row in the table. For example, account number is often a primary key. A "composite primary key" or "super key" is made up of ...

One of the principles within relational theory is that each entity’s row or tuple be uniquely identifiable. This means the defined structure includes some combination of attributes whose populated ...