I have some records that I need to store in a database table and I want to distinguish one record from other records on the basis of name field.
But as the datatype of name field is varchar, it will effect the performance because comparing varchar data with each other is time consuming process in comparision to a numeric field.
So I want each record to have a unique numeric field (say id). But if I make the id as primary key, then the more than one record can contain same name.
What's the solution to the above problem?
You can still create a UNIQUE constraint on the name field:
ALTER TABLE your_table ADD UNIQUE (name);
The UNIQUE constraint, like the PRIMARY KEY constraint, will guarantee that your column will contain only unique values.
Note that you can have many UNIQUE constraints per table, but only one PRIMARY KEY constraint.
Name can be made unique index.
Related
When should I use KEY, PRIMARY KEY, UNIQUE KEY and INDEX?
KEY and INDEX are synonyms in MySQL. They mean the same thing. In databases you would use indexes to improve the speed of data retrieval. An index is typically created on columns used in JOIN, WHERE, and ORDER BY clauses.
Imagine you have a table called users and you want to search for all the users which have the last name 'Smith'. Without an index, the database would have to go through all the records of the table: this is slow, because the more records you have in your database, the more work it has to do to find the result. On the other hand, an index will help the database skip quickly to the relevant pages where the 'Smith' records are held. This is very similar to how we, humans, go through a phone book directory to find someone by the last name: We don't start searching through the directory from cover to cover, as long we inserted the information in some order that we can use to skip quickly to the 'S' pages.
Primary keys and unique keys are similar. A primary key is a column, or a combination of columns, that can uniquely identify a row. It is a special case of unique key. A table can have at most one primary key, but more than one unique key. When you specify a unique key on a column, no two distinct rows in a table can have the same value.
Also note that columns defined as primary keys or unique keys are automatically indexed in MySQL.
KEY and INDEX are synonyms.
You should add an index when performance measurements and EXPLAIN shows you that the query is inefficient because of a missing index. Adding an index can improve the performance of queries (but it can slow down modifications to the table).
You should use UNIQUE when you want to contrain the values in that column (or columns) to be unique, so that attempts to insert duplicate values result in an error.
A PRIMARY KEY is both a unique constraint and it also implies that the column is NOT NULL. It is used to give an identity to each row. This can be useful for joining with another table via a foreign key constraint. While it is not required for a table to have a PRIMARY KEY it is usually a good idea.
Primary key does not allow NULL values, but unique key allows NULL values.
We can declare only one primary key in a table, but a table can have multiple unique keys (column assign).
PRIMARY KEY AND UNIQUE KEY are similar except it has different functions. Primary key makes the table row unique (i.e, there cannot be 2 row with the exact same key). You can only have 1 primary key in a database table.
Unique key makes the table column in a table row unique (i.e., no 2 table row may have the same exact value). You can have more than 1 unique key table column (unlike primary key which means only 1 table column in the table is unique).
INDEX also creates uniqueness. MySQL (example) will create a indexing table for the column that is indexed. This way, it's easier to retrieve the table row value when the query is queried on that indexed table column. The disadvantage is that if you do many updating/deleting/create, MySQL has to manage the indexing tables (and that can be a performance bottleneck).
Hope this helps.
Unique Keys: The columns in which no two rows are similar
Primary Key: Collection of minimum number of columns which can uniquely identify every row in a table (i.e. no two rows are similar in all the columns constituting primary key). There can be more than one primary key in a table. If there exists a unique-key then it is primary key (not "the" primary key) in the table. If there does not exist a unique key then more than one column values will be required to identify a row like (first_name, last_name, father_name, mother_name) can in some tables constitute primary key.
Index: used to optimize the queries. If you are going to search or sort the results on basis of some column many times (eg. mostly people are going to search the students by name and not by their roll no.) then it can be optimized if the column values are all "indexed" for example with a binary tree algorithm.
The primary key is used to work with different tables. This is the foundation of relational databases. If you have a book database it's better to create 2 tables - 1) books and 2) authors with INT primary key "id". Then you use id in books instead of authors name.
The unique key is used if you don't want to have repeated entries. For example you may have title in your book table and want to be sure there is only one entry for each title.
Primary key - we can put only one primary key on a table into a table and we can not left that column blank when we are entering the values into the table.
Unique Key - we can put more than one unique key on a table and we may left that column blank when we are entering the values into the table.
column take unique values (not same) when we applied primary & unique key.
Unique Key :
More than one value can be null.
No two tuples can have same values in unique key.
One or more unique keys can be combined to form a primary key, but not vice versa.
Primary Key
Can contain more than one unique keys.
Uniquely represents a tuple.
i faced an interview question yesterday regarding sql table design.
the question is if the table contains fields like firstName,lastName,Gender(only these fields not not any more)which one we can select as a primary key?
any hint will greatly appreciated
Thank you
None of them will be unique within the table, so you need to make an extra primary key field that auto-increments so that it will be guaranteed never to be the same for two rows. Sounds like they got you with a trick question :)
A PRIMARY KEY must be unique. So you must construct it from data which will not repeat.
So primary key is a unique & not null value.
if the table contains fields like firstName,lastName,Gender(only these fields not not any more)which one we can select as a primary key.
there is you can not use above column as a primary key.
You can combine one field with another field that will give you a primary key (not very recommendable, but you can make this field plus a timestamp field your combined primary key).....
Here's my 2 cents (these rules applies for every new table, for the beginner schema designers)
the primary key should not be compound (that is, it should contain only 1 column)
the primary key column should contain no meaningful data (it should be a number generated and assigned automatically to the new record)
the value of primary key should never change, and should not be null
besides the primary key, you should have an other unique key, probably a compound key, using the meaningful data fields, just to make sure you do not have duplicate records (e.g. firstName,lastName,dateOfBirth)
I have a bunch of huge tables that don't have primary keys. (Don't ask me why) I will append an 'id' field to each table. It will be an integer type. Later, I will promote it to a non-null, unique-value index, and a primary key.
My question: Is there a way in MySQL (5 ish) We have about a hundred tables, and the largest among them have over 1 million records. After creating the new 'id' column, is there a way to have MySQL backfill (ie, add a value to the existing records) the 'id' field? I would rather be able to do this all in MySQL. Otherwise I will have to write a PHP script to populate the existing records.
Thanx, Don!
If you do a
ALTER TABLE table1 ADD COLUMN id INTEGER NOT NULL auto_increment PRIMARY KEY
It will auto populate your table with a auto_incrementing primary key.
Might take a while on a large table.
I have a table in MySQL with 30 columns and thousands of entries.
Is there a way I could make every row unique, that means if a row already exists, I should not be able to enter that row again.
I can't use primary or unique keys here, because individually every column might be repeated.
I want the row to be unique.
for example:-There are is a table with
columns->name,age,height,weight.
In this column I can't make any one or two columns unique but I should not have two entries with all the same data.
You can make a unique index that includes all of the columns in your table
ALTER TABLE buyers ADD UNIQUE idx_row_unique(first_name,last_name,...);
This way you can keep a unique AUTO INCREMENT primary key for join purposes, while still ensuring that all of the data in your table is unique.
You need a composite primary key.
A composite primary key tells MySQL that you want your primary key to be a combination of fields.
More info here:
Why use multiple columns as primary keys (composite primary key)
You may create UNIQUE key on all the columns, not individual unique keys on each column. This means that the combination of the values will be unique - exactly what you need. But please note, that if any column allows null value, if the column contains null value, it will be counted as unique, even if another row contains the same values, with null for the same value.
You can make a unique index on more than one column. Just put all the columns in the index. If the columns are large you may run into issues with the maximum length of an index, but try it first and see.
You can hash the data and set the hash value as your PK, this will ensure that the rows are unique.
When should I use KEY, PRIMARY KEY, UNIQUE KEY and INDEX?
KEY and INDEX are synonyms in MySQL. They mean the same thing. In databases you would use indexes to improve the speed of data retrieval. An index is typically created on columns used in JOIN, WHERE, and ORDER BY clauses.
Imagine you have a table called users and you want to search for all the users which have the last name 'Smith'. Without an index, the database would have to go through all the records of the table: this is slow, because the more records you have in your database, the more work it has to do to find the result. On the other hand, an index will help the database skip quickly to the relevant pages where the 'Smith' records are held. This is very similar to how we, humans, go through a phone book directory to find someone by the last name: We don't start searching through the directory from cover to cover, as long we inserted the information in some order that we can use to skip quickly to the 'S' pages.
Primary keys and unique keys are similar. A primary key is a column, or a combination of columns, that can uniquely identify a row. It is a special case of unique key. A table can have at most one primary key, but more than one unique key. When you specify a unique key on a column, no two distinct rows in a table can have the same value.
Also note that columns defined as primary keys or unique keys are automatically indexed in MySQL.
KEY and INDEX are synonyms.
You should add an index when performance measurements and EXPLAIN shows you that the query is inefficient because of a missing index. Adding an index can improve the performance of queries (but it can slow down modifications to the table).
You should use UNIQUE when you want to contrain the values in that column (or columns) to be unique, so that attempts to insert duplicate values result in an error.
A PRIMARY KEY is both a unique constraint and it also implies that the column is NOT NULL. It is used to give an identity to each row. This can be useful for joining with another table via a foreign key constraint. While it is not required for a table to have a PRIMARY KEY it is usually a good idea.
Primary key does not allow NULL values, but unique key allows NULL values.
We can declare only one primary key in a table, but a table can have multiple unique keys (column assign).
PRIMARY KEY AND UNIQUE KEY are similar except it has different functions. Primary key makes the table row unique (i.e, there cannot be 2 row with the exact same key). You can only have 1 primary key in a database table.
Unique key makes the table column in a table row unique (i.e., no 2 table row may have the same exact value). You can have more than 1 unique key table column (unlike primary key which means only 1 table column in the table is unique).
INDEX also creates uniqueness. MySQL (example) will create a indexing table for the column that is indexed. This way, it's easier to retrieve the table row value when the query is queried on that indexed table column. The disadvantage is that if you do many updating/deleting/create, MySQL has to manage the indexing tables (and that can be a performance bottleneck).
Hope this helps.
Unique Keys: The columns in which no two rows are similar
Primary Key: Collection of minimum number of columns which can uniquely identify every row in a table (i.e. no two rows are similar in all the columns constituting primary key). There can be more than one primary key in a table. If there exists a unique-key then it is primary key (not "the" primary key) in the table. If there does not exist a unique key then more than one column values will be required to identify a row like (first_name, last_name, father_name, mother_name) can in some tables constitute primary key.
Index: used to optimize the queries. If you are going to search or sort the results on basis of some column many times (eg. mostly people are going to search the students by name and not by their roll no.) then it can be optimized if the column values are all "indexed" for example with a binary tree algorithm.
The primary key is used to work with different tables. This is the foundation of relational databases. If you have a book database it's better to create 2 tables - 1) books and 2) authors with INT primary key "id". Then you use id in books instead of authors name.
The unique key is used if you don't want to have repeated entries. For example you may have title in your book table and want to be sure there is only one entry for each title.
Primary key - we can put only one primary key on a table into a table and we can not left that column blank when we are entering the values into the table.
Unique Key - we can put more than one unique key on a table and we may left that column blank when we are entering the values into the table.
column take unique values (not same) when we applied primary & unique key.
Unique Key :
More than one value can be null.
No two tuples can have same values in unique key.
One or more unique keys can be combined to form a primary key, but not vice versa.
Primary Key
Can contain more than one unique keys.
Uniquely represents a tuple.