Natural versus Surrogate Keys. Performance and Usability

Abstract

Choosing the primary key for a table proves to be one of the most important steps in database design. But what happens when we have to pick between a natural or a surrogate key? Is there any performance issue that we must have in mind? Does the literature have a preferred pick? Is usability a concern? We’ll have a look at the advantages and disadvantages of both natural and surrogate keys and the performance and usability issues they address.

Keywords

• primary keys
• natural keys
• surrogate keys
• superkey
• candidate key
• unique key
• performance
• usability.