Compound key

In database design, a composite key is a candidate key that consists of two or more attributes (table columns) that together uniquely identify an entity occurrence (table row). A compound key is a composite key for which each attribute that makes up the key is a simple (foreign) key in its own right.

Example

An example is an entity that represents the modules each student is attending at University. The entity has a studentID and a moduleCode as its primary key. Each of the attributes that make up the primary key are simple keys because each represents a unique reference when identifying a student in one instance and a module in the other, so this key is a compound key.

In contrast, using the same example, imagine we identified a student by their firstName + lastName. In a table representing students our primary key would now be firstName + lastName. Because students can have the same firstNames or the same lastNames these attributes are not simple keys. The primary key firstName + lastName for students is a composite key.

See also

• Relational database
• Candidate key
• Primary key
• Alternate key
• Foreign key
• Unique key
• Surrogate key
• Superkey

External links

• Composite Inverse Functional Properties: for an equivalent notion in the Semantic Web
• Relation Database terms of reference, Keys: An overview of the different types of keys in an RDBMS

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