Mysql – How to properly create composite primary keys – MYSQL

composite-keycomposite-primary-keymyisamMySQLprimary-key

Here is a gross oversimplification of an intense setup I am working with. table_1 and table_2 both have auto-increment surrogate primary keys as the ID. info is a table that contains information about both table_1 and table_2.

table_1 (id, field)  
table_2 (id, field, field)
info ( ???, field)

I am trying to decided if I should make the primary key of info a composite of the IDs from table_1 and table_2. If I were to do this, which of these makes most sense?
( in this example I am combining ID 11209 with ID 437 )

INT(9) 11209437 (i can imagine why this is bad)
VARCHAR (10) 11209-437
DECIMAL (10,4) 11209.437

Or something else?

Would this be fine to use this as the Primary Key on a MYSQL MYISAM DB?

Best Answer

I would use a composite (multi-column) key.

CREATE TABLE INFO (
    t1ID INT,
    t2ID INT,
    PRIMARY KEY (t1ID, t2ID)
)

This way you can have t1ID and t2ID as foreign keys pointing to their respective tables as well.

Related Solutions

Have multiple primary keys in a single table

A Table can have a Composite Primary Key which is a primary key made from two or more columns. For example:

CREATE TABLE userdata (
  userid INT,
  userdataid INT,
  info char(200),
  primary key (userid, userdataid)
);

Update: Here is a link with a more detailed description of composite primary keys.

Mysql – How to output MySQL query results in CSV format

From Save MySQL query results into a text or CSV file:

SELECT order_id,product_name,qty
FROM orders
WHERE foo = 'bar'
INTO OUTFILE '/var/lib/mysql-files/orders.csv'
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n';

Note: That syntax may need to be reordered to

SELECT order_id,product_name,qty
INTO OUTFILE '/var/lib/mysql-files/orders.csv'
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
FROM orders
WHERE foo = 'bar';

in more recent versions of MySQL.

Using this command, columns names will not be exported.

Also note that /var/lib/mysql-files/orders.csv will be on the server that is running MySQL. The user that the MySQL process is running under must have permissions to write to the directory chosen, or the command will fail.

If you want to write output to your local machine from a remote server (especially a hosted or virtualize machine such as Heroku or Amazon RDS), this solution is not suitable.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Have multiple primary keys in a single table

Mysql – How to output MySQL query results in CSV format

Related Topic