In data warehouse tables, natural keys are meaningful values that identify records, such as social security numbers that identify specific customers, calendar dates in a time dimension, or SKU numbers in a product dimension. However, some natural keys are not durable enough to serve as primary keys.
In data warehouse tables, natural keys are meaningful values that identify records, such as social security numbers that identify specific customers, calendarÂ
What Is A Key?
When we are working with databases, we store data in tables. Tables are a collection of the same type of record. A table has columns What Are The Different Types of Keys?
In relational databases, there are several different types of keys: 1. Primary key 2. Natural key 3. Surrogate key 4. Composite key 5. Alternate key 6 What Is A Primary Key?
A primary key is one or more columns in a table that are used to uniquely identify the row. When you’re working with a relational database What Are The Primary Key Requirements?
A primary key has several requirements. First, the data in the columns must be unique Natural Key
What is a Natural Key Surrogate Key
What is a Surrogate Key Composite Key
What is a Composite Key?
A composite key is a primary key, or unique identifier, that is made up or more than one attribute Candidate Key
You might have heard the term “candidate key” before as well. What is it Alternate Key
An alternate key is any of the candidate keys that are not the primary key. They are an option or alternate to the primary key Unique Key
A unique key is an attribute in the table which is unique. It can be used to identify a row, but may not be the primary key. This can also be called an alternate key