A surrogate is, “One appointed to act in place of another.” A surrogate key is appointed to act in place of a natural key. Why? Well, one could argue that surrogate keys existed since the beginning of ...

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 ...

The superiority of surrogate versus natural keys is a hotly debated topic among database developers. Susan Harkins offers some insights into when — and why — you might choose one over the other.