Hi Cindy -
I think it's important to make the distinction between PRIMARY key and SURROGATE key. A primary key is any value that distinctly identifies a record. It could, for business purposes, consist of a user-entered value (such as an SSN), and would therefore require validation. In such an instance, that would be known as a NATURAL key.
Surrogate keys, on the other hand, should never be entered (or even seen) by a user. These are most often integer or GUID values generated at the time of record creation.
Dan LeClair
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