A surrogate is, “One appointed to act in place of another.” A surrogate key is appointed to act in place of a natural key. Why? Well, one could argue that surrogate keys existed since the beginning of ...
The original intention of surrogate keys across multidimensional database designs was to help optimize joins by keeping all keys, used for joining between facts and dimensions, both numeric and single ...
The superiority of surrogate versus natural keys is a hotly debated topic among database developers. Susan Harkins offers some insights into when — and why — you might choose one over the other.