Surrogate means a stand-in, a substitute. Surrogate keys take the place of a natural key as the primary key within a database table. Ideally, surrogate keys stand in the shadows and are used in ...

Most data analysts proclaim that intelligent keys should never be used in a database. There are good reasons for this. Unfortunately, database designers get confused when talking with users and ...

If you’ve worked with relational database systems for any length of time, you’ve probably participated in a discussion (argument?) about the topic of this month’s column, surrogate keys. A great ...