The subject disclosure pertains to databases as well as generation and utilization of keys. A desired or default number of values can be requested from a domain and allocated for use. These values can be utilized to generate surrogate keys. Subsequently or concurrently, the keys can be employed with respect to operations such as single pass loading of databases and/or data warehouses. Any unused keys can be returned and made available for use by other users or processes. Furthermore, the key generation functionality can be provided outside a database thereby relieving a database system of this burden.