Menu
Home
People
Places
Arts
History
Plants & Animals
Science
Life & Culture
Technology
Reference.org
Surrogate key
open-in-new
<p>A surrogate key (or synthetic key, pseudokey, entity identifier, factless key, or technical key) in a <a href="/facts/Database/VYcpkevb">database</a> is a unique identifier for either an <i>entity</i> in the modeled world or an <i>object</i> in the database. The surrogate key is <i>not</i> derived from application data, unlike a <a href="/facts/Natural_key/sCNXUylr"><i>natural</i> (or <i>business</i>) key</a>. </p>