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

Above, the surrogate key is Key in the 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.