Re: Choosing a surrogate key vs. a composite key - "holy war" issue or clear best practice?

From: <dananrg_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:59:33 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <77ff93f5-af45-4376-8678-54d12149d398@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>


On Jun 28, 9:44 am, hpuxrac <johnbhur..._at_sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> Yes this is a religious topic like flavors of unix and linux.
>
> Mostly it is known as surrogate versus natural keys your terminology
> seems to imply something else.

Thanks for correcting me. The same issue could be stated as synthetic vs. natural keys. But your terminology is better paired than mine. There are simple keys and composite keys (also known as complex keys and concatenated keys). I tend to think of simple keys as surrogate/ synthetic, but a Social Security Number is both a simple key and a natural key.

> It's been thrown around and debated and flamed on all/most of the
> major database forums numerous times. You can find several long ones
> here on cdos if you search the archive ( accessible thru google groups
> interface and possibly other ones ).

Thanks HP, will do. I'm trying to learn. Not push a particular agenda and certainly not in a rude manner.

Dana Received on Sat Jun 28 2008 - 08:59:33 CDT

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