difference between primary key and unique key

Question

Primary Key:

• There can only be one primary key constraint in a table
• In some DBMS it cannot be NULL - e.g. MySQL adds NOT NULL
• Primary Key is a unique key identifier of the record

Unique Key:

• Can be more than one unique key in one table
• Unique key can have NULL values
• It can be a candidate key
• Unique key can be NULL ; multiple rows can have NULL values and therefore may not be considered "unique"

Unique Key (UK): It's a column or a group of columns that can identify a uniqueness in a row.

Primary Key (PK): It's also a column or group of columns that can identify a uniqueness in a row.

So the Primary key is just another name for unique key, but the default implementation in SQL Server is different for Primary and Unique Key.

By Default:

1. PK creates a Clustered index and UK creates a Non Clustered Index.
2. PK is not null, but UK allows nulls (Note: By Default)
3. There can only be one and only one PK on a table, but there can be multiple UK's
4. You can override the default implementation depending upon your need.

It really depends what is your aim when deciding whether to create a UK or PK. It follows an analogy like "If there is a team of three people, so all of them are peers, but there will be one of them who will be a pair of peers: PK and UK has similar relation.". I would suggest reading this article: The example given by the author may not seem suitable, but try to get an overall idea.

http://tsqltips.blogspot.com/2012/06/difference-between-unique-key-and.html

For an organization or a business, there are so many physical entities (such as people, resources, machines, etc.) and virtual entities (their Tasks, transactions, activities). Typically, business needs to record and process information of those business entities. These business entities are identified within a whole business domain by a Key.

As per RDBMS prospective, Key (a.k.a Candidate Key) is a value or set of values that uniquely identifies an entity.

For a DB-Table, there are so many keys are exist and might be eligible for Primary Key. So that all keys, primary key, unique key, etc are collectively called as Candidate Key. However, DBA selected a key from candidate key for searching records is called Primary key.

Difference between Primary Key and Unique key

1. Behavior: Primary Key is used to identify a row (record) in a table, whereas Unique-key is to prevent duplicate values in a column (with the exception of a null entry).

2. Indexing: By default SQL-engine creates Clustered Index on primary-key if not exists and Non-Clustered Index on Unique-key.

3. Nullability: Primary key does not include Null values, whereas Unique-key can.

4. Existence: A table can have at most one primary key, but can have multiple Unique-key.

5. Modifiability: You can’t change or delete primary values, but Unique-key values can.

For more information and Examples:

http://dotnetauthorities.blogspot.in/2013/11/Microsoft-SQL-Server-Training-Online-Learning-Classes-Integrity-Constraints-PrimaryKey-Unique-Key_27.html

A primary key must be unique.

A unique key does not have to be the primary key - see candidate key.

That is, there may be more than one combination of columns on a table that can uniquely identify a row - only one of these can be selected as the primary key. The others, though unique are candidate keys.