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Surrogate key
why we implement sarrogate key in ETL Process?


  
Total Answers and Comments: 5 Last Update: April 16, 2009     Asked by: prasannavld 
  
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June 14, 2008 01:28:57   #1  
Swathi.M Member Since: June 2008   Contribution: 1    

RE: Surrogate key
Surrogate key is used to keep a running number as a count to the table.
 
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July 22, 2008 13:37:18   #2  
rajul.ds Member Since: July 2008   Contribution: 3    

RE: Surrogate key
its generates system generated sequence numbers...
 
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July 29, 2008 22:49:39   #3  
vivek1708 Member Since: May 2008   Contribution: 18    

RE: Surrogate key
Using the primary key in the DW doesnt actually end up serving as the unique constraint as the data inside a Warehouse represents - a snapshot of a time and hence using the same primary key as used in the Operational warehouse tends to violate this constraint.
Hence we also use the Surrogate key also called the Datawarehousing key with moving data from ODS to DW in order the contraints and logical integrity is met.

 
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November 04, 2008 01:23:01   #4  
hiteshkhatri Member Since: February 2008   Contribution: 1    

RE: Surrogate key

ETL is not a one time process. It is used to make periodical updates to
dimensional as well as fact data.


Usually dimensions contains lookup data and has less tendency to change but
if it changes and you want to maintain the change history then surrogate key
will help with it. Read about SCD (slowly changing dimension) for more details.


Also surrogate key helps uniquely identify a row in the table. Many times
ETL Extraction process is designed to pull data from multiple sources and
there's possibility that same rows can get pulled from different sources. If you
use key column same as source you are likely to get the Primary Key violation
error. Surrogate key will let you pull all the data and you can clean it during
Transformation/Cleansing process.



 
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April 16, 2009 09:54:18   #5  
ramadevi1111 Member Since: April 2009   Contribution: 1    

RE: Surrogate key
To generate sequence number
Generally it starts with 0ne
Basically it is to differentiate the primary key

 
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