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CBSE Class 11 Informatics Practices Question 45 of 87

Structured Query Language (SQL) — Question 6

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Question 3

What do you understand by the terms candidate key and alternate key in relational database?

Answer

All attribute combinations inside a relation that can serve as primary key are candidate keys as they are candidates for the primary key position.

A candidate key that is not the primary key is called an alternate key. In other words, any attribute that is a candidate for the primary key, i.e., which is capable of becoming a primary key but is not a primary key, is an alternate key.