Re: What do you do with an ENORMOUS primary key?

On Fri, 21 Jun 2002 06:25:29 +1000, "Howard J. Rogers" <dba_at_hjrdba.com> wrote:
>So real dates and hence date ranges are out of the question, I'm afraid. But
>I appreciate your thoughts nonetheless.
...
>> > Create table STANDARDS (
>> > asstcode varchar2(3),
>> > jobcode number(5,0),
>> > season varchar2(3),
>> > period number (2,0),
>> > week number (2,0),
>> > day varchar2(3))

...
>> > My trouble is that since an assett can have many jobs scheduled for it,
>> and
>> > each job can be scheduled many times, the entire table is the entire
>> primary
>> > key.... and that doesn't feel right to me.

How about hashing all these values into a single integer value, then using that as the primary key?

http://otn.oracle.com/docs/products/oracle9i/doc_library/release2/appdev.920/a96612/d_util2.htm#1002139

You'd just have to concatenate everything into a single string in your trigger or stored function. Don't know to what degree this *guarantees* uniqueness, if the calls are done over multiple sessions.

John

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