[database-design] Why use multiple columns as primary keys (composite primary key)

Your second question

How many columns can be used together as a primary key in a given table?

is implementation specific: it's defined in the actual DBMS being used.[1],[2],[3] You have to inspect the technical specification of the database system you use. Some are very detailed, some are not. Searching the web about such limitations can be hard because the terminology varies. The term composite primary key should be mandatory ;)

If you cannot find explicit information, try creating a test database to ensure you can expect stable (and specific) handling of the limit violations (which are to be expected). Be careful to get the right information about this: sometimes the limits are accumulated, and you'll see different results with different database layouts.


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