How to differentiate Master tables and Transactional tables in SQL database

Question

we need to differentiate the Master table and transactional table in SQL server database , pls share the solution step by step and share any scripts available related Master and transactional table differentiate .

Answer 1

Hi @Srinivas Naraipeddi ,

Thank you for your reaching out and welcome to Microsoft Q&A!

During database design, the master tables are designed first. Since the purpose of master tables is to capture the system. The design of the master tables i.e. its columns and constraints describe the entities in the system. For example, user, account, customer etc. Generally, entities of the system are mapped to master tables.

A transaction is an activity performed by entities (master tables) within the system. These activities are captured in transaction tables and usually, these transaction entries have foreign keys to master records.

These events are associated with master records to ensure normalization. Because the transactions can quickly grow in large numbers. The analytics tools, OLTP, partitioning are applied on transaction tables. Most of the querying is done on transaction tables.

The Pie charts, line charts, and graphs are drawn using transaction tables. The design of transaction tables.

The following criteria helps us identify whether a table should be classified as master or transaction.

I hope this helps! If you have any more issues or need further assistance, feel free to share with us!

Best regards,

Lucy Chen

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Answer 2

Hi Srinivas Naraipeddi,
Master table is the table that contains system-level entities that are mostly constant, this table is usually created first when building a database e.g. users, customers,

The master database records all the system-level information for a SQL Server system. This includes instance-wide metadata such as logon accounts, endpoints, linked servers, and system configuration settings.. Also, master is the database that records the existence of all other databases and the location of those database files and records the initialization information for SQL Server. Therefore, SQL Server cannot start if the master database is unavailable.

The Transaction Table in a database is used for capturing system events performed by the Master table. It usually have a reference(foreign key) from the Master table. The date stored here (transaction data) are frequently changing due to activities performed by the entities in the master table. E.g purchase, supplies, orders etc.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/databases/master-database?view=sql-server-ver16