rawId

rawId is a term used in software engineering to describe an original, unmodified identifier that uniquely references a resource as assigned by its source system. It commonly mirrors a primary key in a database and serves as a stable reference to the underlying record before any mappings, transformations, or denormalization steps are applied. The exact meaning and usage of rawId can vary between systems, and it is not a formal standard with a single universal definition.

In practice, rawId is used to link data across components or services, to retrieve the original resource, or to implement caching and change tracking. In API design, a field named rawId may be returned to facilitate server-side lookups, while some integrations may expose a surrogate or opaque identifier to decouple clients from internal database keys. When combining data from multiple sources, rawId can help preserve referential integrity, but exposing internal IDs can raise security or privacy considerations, so some platforms map rawId to a non-sequential token before exposing it externally. See also primary key, surrogate key, natural key, identifier.