Difference between Primary Key and Foreign Key

Shailendra Chauhan Print 3 min read

26 Sep 2012

12 Mar 2019

Intermediate

567K

In SQL Server, there are two keys - primary key and foreign key which seems identical, but actually both are different in features and behaviours. In this article, I would like to share the key differences between primary key and foreign key.

For more information about the keys, please refer to the article Different Types of SQL Keys.

Difference between Primary Key and Foreign Key

Primary Key

Foreign Key

Primary key uniquely identify a record in the table.

Foreign key is a field in the table that is primary key in another table.

Primary Key can't accept null values.

Foreign key can accept multiple null value.

By default, Primary key is clustered index and data in the database table is physically organized in the sequence of clustered index.

Foreign key do not automatically create an index, clustered or non-clustered. You can manually create an index on foreign key.

We can have only one Primary key in a table.

We can have more than one foreign key in a table.

Defining Primary key and Foreign key

 --Create Parent Table 
CREATE TABLE Department 
 (
 DeptID int PRIMARY KEY, --define primary key
 Name varchar (50) NOT NULL,
 Address varchar(100) NULL 
)
 GO 
 --Create Child Table 
CREATE TABLE Employee 
 (
 EmpID int PRIMARY KEY, --define primary key
 Name varchar (50) NOT NULL,
 Salary int NULL,
 --define foreign key
 DeptID int FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES Department(DeptID)
 )

Important Note

As @Marc Jellinek suggested, I would like to add the below points about foreign key :

Foreign keys do not automatically create an index, clustered or non-clustered. You must manually create an index on foreign keys.
There are actual advantages to having a foreign key be supported with a clustered index, but you get only one per table. What's the advantage? If you are selecting the parent plus all child records, you want the child records next to each other. This is easy to accomplish using a clustered index.
Having a null foreign key is usually a bad idea. In the example below, the record in [dbo].[child] is what would be referred to as an "orphan record". Think long and hard before doing this.

Droping Database Tables

 
IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM [sys].[schemas] [sch] INNER JOIN [sys].[tables] [tbl] ON [sch].[schema_id] = [tbl].[schema_id] WHERE [sch].[name] = 'dbo' AND [tbl].[name] = 'child') 
 DROP TABLE [dbo].[child]

 IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM [sys].[schemas] [sch] INNER JOIN [sys].[tables] [tbl] ON [sch].[schema_id] = [tbl].[schema_id] WHERE [sch].[name] = 'dbo' AND [tbl].[name] = 'parent') 
 DROP TABLE [dbo].[parent]

Creating Indexes on Tables

 
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[parent]
( 
[id] [int] IDENTITY NOT NULL, 
[name] [varchar](250) NOT NULL, 
CONSTRAINT [PK_dbo__parent] PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED ([id])
)
 CREATE TABLE [dbo].[child]
(
[id] [int] IDENTITY NOT NULL, [parent_id] [int] NULL, 
[name] [varchar](250) NOT NULL, 
CONSTRAINT [PK_dbo__child] PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED ([id]), 
CONSTRAINT [FK_dbo__child__dbo__parent] FOREIGN KEY ([parent_id]) REFERENCES [dbo].[parent]([id])
)
 --Insert data
INSERT INTO [dbo].[parent] ([name]) VALUES ('parent1')
INSERT INTO [dbo].[child] ([parent_id], [name])VALUES(1, 'child 1')
INSERT INTO [dbo].[child] ([parent_id], [name])VALUES(NULL, 'child 2') 
--Select data 
SELECT * FROM [dbo].[child]

Summary

I hope you will enjoy these tricks while programming with SQL Server. I would like to have feedback from my blog readers. Your valuable feedback, question, or comments about this article are always welcome.