Surrogate Key in RDBMS


A Surrogate Key’s only purpose is to be a unique identifier in a database, for example, incremental key, GUID, etc. It has

Surrogate Key has no actual meaning and is used to represent existence. It has an existence only for data analysis.

Example

<ProductPrice>

Key

ProductID

Price

505_92
1987
200
698_56
1256
170
304_57
1898
250
458_66
1666
110

Above, the surrogate key is Key in the <ProductPrice> table.

Other Examples

Some other examples of a Surrogate Key −

  • Counter can also be shown as Surrogate Key.
  • System date/time stamp
  • Random alphanumeric string.

Updated on: 15-Jun-2020

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