Friday 12 May 2017

What is Primary Key, Unique Key and Foreign Key?

In this post, I will explain What is Primary Key, Unique Key and Foreign Key?

1. Primary Key
Primary Key provides uniqueness for a column or set of columns in a table and used to identify a row (a record) in a table. A database table can have only one Primary Key and a column with a Primary Key doesn't allow NULL value (Not nullable). Primary Key generates a Unique Clustered Index.

2. Unique Key
Unique Key provides uniqueness for a column or set of columns in a table like Primary KeyIt is used to prevent duplicate values in a column. A database table can have more than one Unique Key and it allows at least one NULL value in a column( Nullable)Unique Key generates a Unique Non-Clustered Index.

3. Foreign Key
A Foreign Key is a Column (or Set of Columns) that references a column (most often the Primary Key) of another table. A table containing the Foreign Key is called a child table, and a table containing Primary Key is called a parent table. 
Foreign Key is used to ensure referential integrity of the data in two tables and to prevent actions that would destroy links between tables. Foreign Key also prevents invalid data from being inserted into a Foreign Key column, because it has to be one of the values contained in a parent table referenced column.



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