Re: design question

vnr1995_at_gmail.com wrote:
> Jonathan Lewis wrote:
>
> >
> > It looks like you should have three tables:
> >
> > questions (question_id, etc.)
> > tests(test_id, etc.)
> > questions_in_test(test_id, question_id, etc.)
> >
> > Why have you introduced a surrogate key ?
>
> The shop I am presently in has a standard practice to add some unique
> id (like a sequence or sys_guid) to each row. I don't know either
> advantages or disadvantages of having that surrogate key.

The simple disadvantage is that it is pseudo data that will require i/o, but produces nothing, or you are doing more work than you have to do, at least in this example. Received on Thu Dec 21 2006 - 09:38:58 CST