Qlik Sense Data Architect Certification Practice Exam

A Surrogate Key serves as a unique identifier for records within a database and is particularly useful in scenarios where non-numeric keys can present challenges in performance or data handling. Surrogate Keys are often used in data warehousing environments where the actual business keys might be non-numeric (such as alphanumeric strings).

Using non-numeric keys directly can result in inefficiencies during processing and querying, especially when performing joins or aggregations. Surrogate Keys, being simple numeric values, can significantly optimize calculation time since database systems handle numeric comparisons and indexing more efficiently than string operations. This efficiency gain enhances the overall performance of the data model, particularly in large datasets typical in data analytics and business intelligence applications.

While the other options pertain to aspects of data handling and integrity, they do not specifically highlight the utility and performance benefits that a Surrogate Key provides when dealing with non-numeric identifiers. The emphasis on performance optimization through numeric representation makes the choice about non-numeric keys the most fitting scenario for using Surrogate Keys.