A super key is a set of one or more columns that can uniquely identify rows in a table. A candidate key is a minimal super key with no redundant attributes. The document provides examples of super keys and candidate keys using an Employee table. A composite key uses more than one attribute to uniquely identify rows. The primary key uniquely identifies rows and cannot contain duplicates or nulls. Alternate keys are remaining candidate keys that are not the primary key. A foreign key points to the primary key of another table, creating a relationship between tables.
A super key is a set of one or more columns that can uniquely identify rows in a table. A candidate key is a minimal super key with no redundant attributes. The document provides examples of super keys and candidate keys using an Employee table. A composite key uses more than one attribute to uniquely identify rows. The primary key uniquely identifies rows and cannot contain duplicates or nulls. Alternate keys are remaining candidate keys that are not the primary key. A foreign key points to the primary key of another table, creating a relationship between tables.
A super key is a set of one or more columns that can uniquely identify rows in a table. A candidate key is a minimal super key with no redundant attributes. The document provides examples of super keys and candidate keys using an Employee table. A composite key uses more than one attribute to uniquely identify rows. The primary key uniquely identifies rows and cannot contain duplicates or nulls. Alternate keys are remaining candidate keys that are not the primary key. A foreign key points to the primary key of another table, creating a relationship between tables.
A super key is a set of one or more columns that can uniquely identify rows in a table. A candidate key is a minimal super key with no redundant attributes. The document provides examples of super keys and candidate keys using an Employee table. A composite key uses more than one attribute to uniquely identify rows. The primary key uniquely identifies rows and cannot contain duplicates or nulls. Alternate keys are remaining candidate keys that are not the primary key. A foreign key points to the primary key of another table, creating a relationship between tables.
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Super key in DBMS
Definition: A super key is a set or one of more columns (attributes) to uniquely identify rows in a table. Often people get confused between super key and candidate key, so we will also discuss a little about candidate key here.
How candidate key is different from super key?
Answer is simple – Candidate keys are selected from the set of super keys, the only thing we take care while selecting candidate key is: It should not have any redundant attribute. That’s the reason they are also termed as minimal super key.
Let’s take an example to understand this: Employee table
All of the above sets are able to uniquely identify rows of the employee table.
Candidate Keys: As I stated above, they are the minimal super keys with no redundant attributes.
{Emp_SSN} {Emp_Number}
Only these two sets are candidate keys as all other sets are having redundant attributes that are not necessary for unique identification.
Composite key in DBMS
A key that consists of more than one attribute to uniquely identify rows (also known as records & tuples) in a table is called composite key. It is also known as compound key.
Example: Table – Sales
cust_Id order_Id product_code product_count
C01 O001 P007 23
C02 O123 P007 19
C02 O123 P230 82
C01 O001 P890 42
Key in above table: {cust_id, order_id}
This is a composite key as it consists of more than one attribute. Primary key in DBMS Definition: A primary is a column or set of columns in a table that uniquely identifies tuples (rows) in that table.
Example: Student Table
Stu_Id Stu_Name Stu_Age
101 Steve 23
102 John 24
103 Robert 28
104 Carl 22
In the above Student table, the Stu_Id column uniquely identifies each row of the table.
Note:
We denote the primary key by underlining the column name.
The value of primary key should be unique for each row of the table. Primary key column cannot contain duplicate values. Primary key column should not contain nulls. Primary keys are not necessarily to be a single column; more than one column can also be a primary key for a table. For e.g. {Stu_Id, Stu_Name} collectively can play a role of primary key in the above table, but that does not make sense because Stu_Id alone is enough to uniquely identifies rows in a table then why to make things complex. Having that said, we should choose more than one columns as primary key only when there is no single column that can play the role of primary key.
How to choose a primary key?
There are two ways: Either to create a column and let database automatically have numbers in increasing order for each row or choose a column yourself making sure that it does not contain duplicates and nulls. For e.g. in the above Student table, The Stu_Name column cannot be a primary key as more than one people can have same name, similarly the Stu_Age column cannot play a primary key role as more than one persons can have same age.
Alternate key in DBMS
Out of all candidate keys, only one gets selected as primary key, remaining keys are known as alternative or secondary keys.
For example: Consider the below table
Emp_Id Emp_Number Emp_Name
E01 2264 Steve
E22 2278 Ajeet
E23 2288 Chaitanya
E45 2290 Robert
There are two candidate keys in above table:
{Emp_Id} {Emp_Number}
Since we have selected Emp_Id as primary key, the remaining key Emp_Number would be called alternative or secondary key.
Foreign key in DBMS
Definition: Foreign keys are the columns of a table that points to the primary key of another table. They act as a cross-reference between tables.
For example: In the below example the Stu_Id column in Course_enrollment table is a foreign key as it points to the primary key of the Student table. Course_enrollment table:
