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.