"Joris Dobbelsteen" <Joris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > What would have been better without surrogate keys all-over: > * Easier to write complex queries with much fewer tables to be queried. > * Much faster query performance, as fewer tables need to be referenced. > * Better integrity enforcement with simple foreign key constraints. Not this debeta again. ;) Surrugate vs natural keys shouldn't make a difference in how many yables you have--they depends on the degree of normalization. Sounds like you denormalized your database and happened to eliminate surrogate keys at the same time. Using that to say "surrogate keys are bad" is kind of misleading. -Doug