Surrogate key-primary key

Question

Describe a surrogate key and also explain the ideal primary key and illustrate how surrogate keys meet up this ideal?

Answer 1

The ideal primary key is numeric, short and fixed. A surrogate key is an exclusive, DBMS-supplied identifier intended to be employed as the primary key of a table. Furthermore, the DBMS will not permit the value of a surrogate key to be modified. The values of a surrogate key have no meaning to the users and are generally hidden on forms and reports. By design, they are numeric, short and fixed and therefore meet the definition of the ideal primary key.