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Primary Key Definition

A primary key uniquely identifies each record in a table and can consist of a single attribute like a student ID number or multiple attributes in combination. It ensures each row has a unique identifier and prevents duplicate records. Examples given show a student ID would be a better primary key for a student table than name attributes since names are not guaranteed to be unique per person. Additionally, a primary key column must contain only unique, non-null values to properly identify each row.

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498 views1 page

Primary Key Definition

A primary key uniquely identifies each record in a table and can consist of a single attribute like a student ID number or multiple attributes in combination. It ensures each row has a unique identifier and prevents duplicate records. Examples given show a student ID would be a better primary key for a student table than name attributes since names are not guaranteed to be unique per person. Additionally, a primary key column must contain only unique, non-null values to properly identify each row.

Uploaded by

Akhil Madavan
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Primary Key Definition: What is a Primary

Key
efinition: The primary key of a relational table uniquely identifies each record in the table. It
can either be a normal attribute that is guaranteed to be unique (such as Social Security
Number in a table with no more than one record per person) or it can be generated by the
DBMS (such as a globally unique identifier, or GUID, in Microsoft SQL Server). Primary
keys may consist of a single attribute or multiple attributes in combination.
Examples:

Imagine we have a STUDENTS table that contains a record for each student at a university.
The student's unique student ID number would be a good choice for a primary key in the
STUDENTS table. The student's first and last name would not be a good choice, as there is
always the chance that more than one student might have the same name.

OTHER DEFNITION
A primary key is a column (or columns) in a table that uniquely identifies the rows in that
table.

CUSTOMERS

CustomerNo FirstName LastName


1 Sally Thompson
2 Sally Henderson
3 Harry Henderson
4 Sandra Wellington

For example, in the table above, CustomerNo is the primary key.

The values placed in primary key columns must be unique for each row: no duplicates can be
tolerated. In addition, nulls are not allowed in primary key columns.

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