On Mon, 11 Oct 2004, damorgan_at_x.washington.edu wrote:
> Galen Boyer wrote:
>> What does one do when the "natural keys" are actually
>> different based on the source? Maybe someone needs to define
>> a "natural key". Seems to me, it is a key that some other
>> system has already defined.
>
> The natural key is well defined by the work done by Date and
> Codd. That which uniquely defines a record in one set does not
> necessarily define a unique record in another set.
So, what does one do when there are multiple sources of data.
Suppose you are storing loans for customers who want to login to
your analytic application and analyze their loans. One
customer's representation of the loan is a string, one is a
number and one has a two-part key. Whats the "natural key"?
--
Galen Boyer
Received on Tue Oct 12 2004 - 07:48:07 CDT
