Computer Science – Databases | e-Consult

The purpose of a primary key is to uniquely identify each record (or row) within a table in a relational database. It acts as a guaranteed way to distinguish one record from another.

The primary key ensures data integrity by preventing duplicate records. It also facilitates efficient data retrieval and linking to other tables. By providing a unique identifier, it allows for quick and accurate searching, updating, and deleting of specific records. Furthermore, it's used to establish relationships between tables – a primary key in one table can be referenced as a foreign key in another.