Should all database tables have a primary key?

Question

Is it good practice to give every database table a primary key? It seems to me that if the primary key is not explicitly needed, then it would just be extra clutter in my d

Answer 1

Generally yes - I'd make exceptions for tables that are simply rolled up versions of 'real' data stored for reporting purposes (i.e. rollup tables created for reporting/performance reasons), but generally I always have a primary key - and in my apps, its almost always an auto-increment integer that takes almost no extra space relative to the row size.