Re: Can a surrogate key be a foreign key?

From: Tom Hester <tom_at_metadata.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 11:39:00 -0700
Message-ID: <41127EC4.2050400@metadata.com>

John wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Is there a clear definition of what a surrogate key is? Does a
> surrogate key imply a candidate key? Would it make sense to say that a
> particular foreign key of a table is a surrogate key?
>
> John

A surrogate key is an artificial or synthetic key that is used as a substitute for a natural key. Ralph Kimball, DBMS Online.

A surrogate key is an artificially produced value, most often a system-managed, incrementing counter whose values can range from 1 to n, where n represents a table's maximum number of rows. Michelle A. Poolet, SQL Server Magazine

So, the concept surrogate key has nothing to do with the concept foreign key. Received on Thu Aug 05 2004 - 13:39:00 CDT