10 April 2009

DBMS: Alternate Key (Definitions)

"Column or combination of columns, not the primary key columns, whose values uniquely identify a row in a table." (Sharon Allen & Evan Terry, "Beginning Relational Data Modeling 2nd Ed.", 2005)

"A candidate key that is not used as the table's primary key." (Rod Stephens, "Beginning Database Design Solutions", 2008)

"Unique identifier for an entity instance other than the primary key." (Craig S Mullins, "Database Administration", 2012)

"Other columns that could be used as a primary key but are not implemented as such." (Owen Williams, "MCSE TestPrep: SQL Server 6.5 Design and Implementation", 1998)

"In relational theory, any unique key that is not a primary key." (David C Hay, "Data Model Patterns: A Metadata Map", 2010)

No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

About Me

My photo
IT Professional with more than 24 years experience in IT in the area of full life-cycle of Web/Desktop/Database Applications Development, Software Engineering, Consultancy, Data Management, Data Quality, Data Migrations, Reporting, ERP implementations & support, Team/Project/IT Management, etc.