Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Entities, Properties, Names, and Identifiability
2. Relational Representation
3. Kinds of Keys
3.1. Candidate, Primary, and Alternate Keys
3.2. Natural and Surrogate Keys
4. Primary Formal Mandate
5. Primary Key Designation
6. Primary Keys and Performance
6.1. Indexes
Conclusion
Appendix: Primary Keys, Duplicates and SQL
Recently I participated in a LinkedIn exchange initiated by the following statement:
“First-Order Predicate Logic
is quietly breaking enterprise semantics. FOPL assumes meaning can be expressed
as predicates applied to entities:
subject → predicate → object
That works beautifully in theory. It fails in
practice. Because the predicate is where ambiguity hides. So you can
build vast semantic graphs where:
– entities carry multiple meanings
– predicates encode multiple dimensions
– relationships look precise but aren’t disjoint
It scales connections. Not clarity.” –Robert
Vane
