Should each and every table have a primary key?

Question

I'm creating a database table and I don't have a logical primary key assigned to it. So, I'm thinking about leaving it without a primary key, but I'm feeling a bit guilty about it. Should I?

Should each and every table have a primary key?

Answer 1

Short answer: yes.

Long answer:

• You need your table to be joinable on something
• If you want your table to be clustered, you need some kind of a primary key.
• If your table design does not need a primary key, rethink your design: most probably, you are missing something. Why keep identical records?

In MySQL, the InnoDB storage engine always creates a primary key if you didn't specify it explicitly, thus making an extra column you don't have access to.

Note that a primary key can be composite.

If you have a many-to-many link table, you create the primary key on all fields involved in the link. Thus you ensure that you don't have two or more records describing one link.

Besides the logical consistency issues, most RDBMS engines will benefit from including these fields in a unique index.

And since any primary key involves creating a unique index, you should declare it and get both logical consistency and performance.

See this article in my blog for why you should always create a unique index on unique data:

• Making an index UNIQUE

P.S. There are some very, very special cases where you don't need a primary key.

Mostly they include log tables which don't have any indexes for performance reasons.

Answer 2

Always best to have a primary key. This way it meets first normal form and allows you to continue along the database normalization path.

As stated by others, there are some reasons not to have a primary key, but most will not be harmed if there is a primary key

Answer 3

Pretty much any time I've created a table without a primary key, thinking I wouldn't need one, I've ended up going back and adding one. I now create even my join tables with an auto-generated identity field that I use as the primary key.

Answer 4

Except for a few very rare cases (possibly a many-to-many relationship table, or a table you temporarily use for bulk-loading huge amounts of data), I would go with the saying:

If it doesn't have a primary key, it's not a table!

Marc

Answer 5

Disagree with the suggested answer. The short answer is: NO.

The purpose of the primary key is to uniquely identify a row on the table in order to form a relationship with another table. Traditionally, an auto-incremented integer value is used for this purpose, but there are variations to this.

There are cases though, for example logging time-series data, where the existence of a such key is simply not needed and just takes up memory. Making a row unique is simply ...not required!

A small example: Table A: LogData

Columns:  DateAndTime, UserId, AttribA, AttribB, AttribC etc...

No Primary Key needed.

Table B: User

Columns: Id, FirstName, LastName etc. 

Primary Key (Id) needed in order to be used as a "foreign key" to LogData table.

Answer 6

Just add it, you will be sorry later when you didn't (selecting, deleting. linking, etc)

Answer 7

Will you ever need to join this table to other tables? Do you need a way to uniquely identify a record? If the answer is yes, you need a primary key. Assume your data is something like a customer table that has the names of the people who are customers. There may be no natural key because you need the addresses, emails, phone numbers, etc. to determine if this Sally Smith is different from that Sally Smith and you will be storing that information in related tables as the person can have mulitple phones, addesses, emails, etc. Suppose Sally Smith marries John Jones and becomes Sally Jones. If you don't have an artifical key onthe table, when you update the name, you just changed 7 Sally Smiths to Sally Jones even though only one of them got married and changed her name. And of course in this case withouth an artificial key how do you know which Sally Smith lives in Chicago and which one lives in LA?

You say you have no natural key, therefore you don't have any combinations of field to make unique either, this makes the artficial key critical.

I have found anytime I don't have a natural key, an artifical key is an absolute must for maintaining data integrity. If you do have a natural key, you can use that as the key field instead. But personally unless the natural key is one field, I still prefer an artifical key and unique index on the natural key. You will regret it later if you don't put one in.

Answer 8

It is a good practice to have a PK on every table, but it's not a MUST. Most probably you will need a unique index, and/or a clustered index (which is PK or not) depending on your need.

Check out the Primary Keys and Clustered Indexes sections on Books Online (for SQL Server)

"PRIMARY KEY constraints identify the column or set of columns that have values that uniquely identify a row in a table. No two rows in a table can have the same primary key value. You cannot enter NULL for any column in a primary key. We recommend using a small, integer column as a primary key. Each table should have a primary key. A column or combination of columns that qualify as a primary key value is referred to as a candidate key."

But then check this out also: http://www.aisintl.com/case/primary_and_foreign_key.html

Answer 9

I know that in order to use certain features of the gridview in .NET, you need a primary key in order for the gridview to know which row needs updating/deleting. General practice should be to have a primary key or primary key cluster. I personally prefer the former.

Answer 10

To make it future proof you really should. If you want to replicate it you'll need one. If you want to join it to another table your life (and that of the poor fools who have to maintain it next year) will be so much easier.

Answer 11

I am in the role of maintaining application created by offshore development team. Now I am having all kinds of issues in the application because original database schema did not contain PRIMARY KEYS on some tables. So please dont let other people suffer because of your poor design. It is always good idea to have primary keys on tables.

Answer 12

I always have a primary key, even if in the beginning I don't have a purpose in mind yet for it. There have been a few times when I eventually need a PK in a table that doesn't have one and it's always more trouble to put it in later. I think there is more of an upside to always including one.

Answer 13

If you are using Hibernate its not possible to create an Entity without a primary key. This issues can create problem if you are working with an existing database which was created with plain sql/ddl scripts, and no primary key was added

Answer 14

In short, no. However, you need to keep in mind that certain client access CRUD operations require it. For future proofing, I tend to always utilize primary keys.

Answer 15

Late to the party but I wanted to add my two cents:

Should each and every table have a primary key?

• If you are talking about "Relational Albegra", the answer is Yes. Modelling data this way requires the entities and tables to have a primary key. The problem with relational algebra (apart from the fact there are like 20 different, mismatching flavors of it), is that it only exists in paper. You can't build real world applications using relational algebra.

• Now, if you are talking about databases from real world apps, they partially/mostly adhere to the relational algebra, by taking the best of it and discarding the rest. Also, database engines offer massive non-relational functionality nowadays (it's 2020 now). So in this case the answer is No. In any case, 99.9% of my real world tables have a primary key, but there are justifiable exceptions. Case in point: event/log tables (multiple indexes, but not a single key in sight).

Bottom line, in transactional applications that follow the entity/relationship model it makes a lot of sense to have primary keys for almost (if not) all of the tables. If you ever decide to skip the primary key of a table, make sure you have a good reason for it, and you are prepared to defend your decision.

Answer 16

I'd like to find something official like this - 15.6.2.1 Clustered and Secondary Indexes - MySQL.

If the table has no PRIMARY KEY or suitable UNIQUE index, InnoDB internally generates a hidden clustered index named GEN_CLUST_INDEX on a synthetic column containing row ID values. The rows are ordered by the ID that InnoDB assigns to the rows in such a table. The row ID is a 6-byte field that increases monotonically as new rows are inserted. Thus, the rows ordered by the row ID are physically in insertion order.

So, why not create primary key or something like it by yourself? Besides, ORM cannot identify this hidden ID, meaning that you cannot use ID in your code.