Why do we need a surrogate key in fact table?

Question

Fact table surrogate keys, which are not associated with any dimension, are assigned sequentially during the ETL load process and are used 1) as the single column primary key of the fact table; 2) to serve as an immediate identiﬁer of a fact table row without navigating multiple dimensions for ETL purposes; 3) to allow .

Why is a surrogate key needed?

Software developers often use surrogate keys to business users to identify records. They are displayed on screens and printed on reports. However, surrogate keys are meaningless. They serve no purpose, except to technically identify a record uniquely in one source system.

Do we need surrogate key in fact table?

Surrogate keys for fact tables are not logically required but can be very helpful in the back room ETL processing.

Why and where are surrogate keys used in the data warehouse?

Data warehouse surrogate keys are sequentially generated meaningless numbers associated with each and every record in the data warehouse. These surrogate keys are used to join dimension and fact tables.

What is the use of surrogate key in SQL?

A Surrogate Key in SQL Server is a unique identifier for each row in the table. It is just a key. Using this key we can identify a unique row. There is no business meaning for Surrogate Keys.

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