Primary Key Constraint

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The PRIMARY KEY constraint specifies that the constrained columns' values must uniquely identify each row.

Unlike other constraints which have very specific uses, the PRIMARY KEY constraint must be used for every table because it provides an intrinsic structure to the table's data.

A table's primary key should be explicitly defined in the CREATE TABLE statement. Tables can only have one primary key.

You can change the primary key of an existing table with an ALTER TABLE ... ALTER PRIMARY KEY statement, or by using DROP CONSTRAINT and then ADD CONSTRAINT in the same transaction.

Syntax

PRIMARY KEY constraints can be defined at the table level. However, if you only want the constraint to apply to a single column, it can be applied at the column level.

Column level

Example

> CREATE TABLE orders (
    order_id        UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
    order_date      TIMESTAMP NOT NULL,
    order_mode      STRING(8),
    customer_id     INT,
    order_status    INT
  );

Table level

Example

> CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS inventories (
    product_id        INT,
    warehouse_id      INT,
    quantity_on_hand  INT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (product_id, warehouse_id)
  );

Details

The columns in the PRIMARY KEY constraint are used to create its primary index, which CockroachDB uses by default to access the table's data. This index does not take up additional disk space (unlike secondary indexes, which do) because CockroachDB uses the primary index to structure the table's data in the key-value layer. For more information, see our blog post SQL in CockroachDB: Mapping Table Data to Key-Value Storage.

To ensure each row has a unique identifier, the PRIMARY KEY constraint combines the properties of both the UNIQUE and NOT NULL constraints. The properties of both constraints are necessary to make sure each row's primary key columns contain distinct sets of values. The properties of the UNIQUE constraint ensure that each value is distinct from all other values. However, because NULL values never equal other NULL values, the UNIQUE constraint is not enough (two rows can appear the same if one of the values is NULL). To prevent the appearance of duplicated values, the PRIMARY KEY constraint also enforces the properties of the NOT NULL constraint.

For best practices, see Schema Design: Select primary key columns.

Example

> CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS inventories (
    product_id        INT,
    warehouse_id      INT,
    quantity_on_hand  INT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (product_id, warehouse_id)
  );

> INSERT INTO inventories VALUES (1, 1, 100);

> INSERT INTO inventories VALUES (1, 1, 200);

pq: duplicate key value (product_id,warehouse_id)=(1,1) violates unique constraint "primary"

> INSERT INTO inventories VALUES (1, NULL, 100);

pq: null value in column "warehouse_id" violates not-null constraint

Changing primary key columns

You can change the primary key of an existing table by doing one of the following:

• Issuing an ALTER TABLE ... ALTER PRIMARY KEY statement. When you change a primary key with ALTER PRIMARY KEY, the old primary key index becomes a secondary index. This helps optimize the performance of queries that still filter on the old primary key column.
• Issuing an ALTER TABLE ... DROP CONSTRAINT ... PRIMARY KEY statement to drop the primary key, followed by an ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT ... PRIMARY KEY statement, in the same transaction, to add a new primary key. This replaces the existing primary key without creating a secondary index from the old primary key. For examples, see the ADD CONSTRAINT and DROP CONSTRAINT pages.

See also

• Constraints
• CHECK constraint
• DEFAULT constraint
• REFERENCES constraint (Foreign Key)
• PRIMARY KEY constraint
• NOT NULL constraint
• UNIQUE constraint
• SHOW CONSTRAINTS
• ALTER PRIMARY KEY
• ALTER TABLE

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