On 08/25/2015 05:17 PM, Melvin Davidson wrote:
I think a lot of people here are missing the point. I was trying to give examples of natural keys, but a lot of people are taking great delight in pointing out exceptions to examples, rather than understanding the point. So for the sake of argument, a natural key is something that in itself is unique and the possibility of a duplicate does not exist. Before ANYONE continues to insist that a serial id column is good, consider the case where the number of tuples will exceed a bigint. Don't say it cannot happen, because it can. However, if you have an alphanumeric field, let's say varchar 50, and it's guaranteed that it will never have a duplicate, then THAT is a natural primary
That is a big IF and a guarantee I would not put money on.
key and beats the hell out of a generic "id" field. Further to the point, since I started this thread, I am holding to it and will not discuss "natural primary keys" any further.
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