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The ideal primary key is short, numeric and fixed. A surrogate key is a unique, DBMS-supplied identifier intended to be used as the primary key of a table. Further, the DBMS will not allow the value of a surrogate key to be changed. The values of a surrogate key have no meaning to the users and are usually hidden on forms and reports. By design, they are short, numeric and fixed and thus meet the definition of the ideal primary key.
