Re: Surrogate Key vs Production Key

Noons wrote:

> You may chose to label anything not relationaly "pure" as sloppy, but
> to do so you have to demonstrate a better alternative than a complex
> coding technique and a maintenance/upgrade nightmare.  And you still
> cannot counter why surrogate keys are so widely used other than with
> adjectives like that one.  Even Oracle's own applications use them
> extensively.  Wonder why:  "sloppy" design again?

I do wish you wouldn't get so heated.

My comment about French people and garlic was to the point I think: this stuff can start wars, but there's no need for you to don the fatigues and start doing Squaddie duty.

I didn't criticise Synthetics. I didn't promote Naturals. I said that a particular piece of my experience has been with natural keys that worked well. And I have also seen a synthetic key implementation work poorly.

That's all. I am agnostic on the matter's technicalities. I prefer natural keys because they are indeed natural and I can understand them better when I see them. But I am happy to defend your right to use synthetics, too.

It is therefore not for me to "counter" anything. I just don't think it is worth getting that worked up about. But I do think that an appeal to numbers ("the rest of the IT world uses synthetics") is not calculated to win anyone over. The rest of the IT world also uses Windows.

HJR Received on Fri Oct 15 2004 - 18:15:11 CDT