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carumuga
Posting Yak Master
174 Posts |
 Posted - 2009-01-12 : 09:03:05
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| Hi,What is the need of surrogate key though my table has primary key defined and the value doesnt change. Is there any advantage in having surrogate in the table?Thanks in advance. |
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sodeep
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker
7174 Posts |
Posted - 2009-01-12 : 09:40:12
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| Read this:http://decipherinfosys.wordpress.com/2007/02/01/surrogate-keys-vs-natural-keys-for-primary-key/ |
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visakh16
Very Important crosS Applying yaK Herder
52326 Posts |
Posted - 2009-01-12 : 10:13:36
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| yup. you have quite a few. one case is where your data comes from more than one source. such cases there can be possibilities of same value as pk on both systems. thus use of surrogate key ensures uniqueness. Also it provides a standardization just in case pks are different format in both systems.Also there can be cases where you want to represent special conditions (stages ) in data which you cant represent by means of pk like value not assigned, period yet to come,... which is significant in analytical systems.Another case is when you want to track changes of your data over time by adding new rows with same pk but just surrogate key changing over time. |
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carumuga
Posting Yak Master
174 Posts |
Posted - 2009-01-13 : 07:27:34
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| Pretty impressive. Thanks for you input |
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visakh16
Very Important crosS Applying yaK Herder
52326 Posts |
Posted - 2009-01-13 : 08:49:36
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| welcome |
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Surrogate keys