Explain the concept of a surrogate key. What will be an ideal ...

[Haya94]

Explain the concept of a surrogate key.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

An entity that must logically depend on another entity is called a(n) ________ entity.

[Sassygurl126]

Answer to Question 1

A surrogate key is an artificial key that is created to act as the primary key for a relation. The surrogate key is a unique, numeric value that is appended to the relation. Surrogate keys are used in situations when no suitable primary key exists within the user data, or when all available primary keys within the data are too cumbersome for an efficient design. Surrogate key values have no meaning to the users and are normally hidden on all forms, reports, and displays. Most DBMS products have the ability to automatically generate values for surrogate keys as needed.

Answer to Question 2

[Haya94]

Excellent

[olderstudent]

Thanks for the timely response, appreciate it