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+# Keys
+
+Document the different Keys in RisingWave.
+
+## Stream Key
+
+The key which can identify records in the RisingWave stream.
+
+For example, given the following stream chunk, where stream key is `k1, k2`:
+```text
+| op | k1 | k2 | v1 | v2 |
+|----|----|----|----|----|
+| -  | 1  | 2  | 1  | 1  |
+| +  | 1  | 2  | 3  | 4  |
+| +  | 0  | 1  | 2  | 3  |
+```
+
+We can tell that the record corresponding to the key `(1, 2)`
+has been updated from `(1, 2, 1, 1)` to `(1, 2, 3, 4)`.
+
+The record corresponding to key `(0, 1)` has been inserted with `(0, 1, 2, 3)`.
+
+It may not be the minimal set of columns required to identify a record,
+for instance `group key` could be part of the stream key, to specify the distribution of records.
+
+## Primary Key (Storage)
+
+This discusses the internal primary key (pk) which we often see in streaming operators.
+It is different from the primary key in SQL.
+
+A more appropriate name for this would be `Storage Primary Key`.
+
+Besides uniquely identifying a record in storage, this key may also be used
+to provide ordering properties.
+
+Let's use the following query as an example:
+
+```sql
+create table t1(id bigint primary key, i bigint);
+create materialized view mv1 as select id, i from t1 order by i, id;
+```
+
+`mv1` has the following plan:
+```text
+ StreamMaterialize {
+   columns: [id, i],
+   stream_key: [id],
+   pk_columns: [i, id], -- notice the pk_columns
+   pk_conflict: NoCheck
+ }
+ └─StreamTableScan { table: t1, columns: [id, i] }
+```
+
+You can see that the `pk_columns` are `[i, id]`, although the upstream SQL primary key is just `id`.
+In the storage layer, key-value pairs are sorted by their keys.
+
+Because the materialized view contains an `order by i, id`,
+the storage primary key is `[i, id]` to ensure they are ordered in storage.
+Importantly, `i` will be a prefix of the key.
+
+Then when iterating over the keys from storage, the records are returned in the correct order per partition.
+
+When the update stream comes, we can just use `id` to identify the records that need to be updated.
+We can get the whole record corresponding to the `id` and get the `i` from there.
+Then we can use that to update the materialized state accordingly.
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