Re: Auto increment

"Costin Cozianu" <c_cozianu_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:b9kodd$ka6pj$1_at_ID-152540.news.dfncis.de...
> Marshall Spight wrote:
> > "--CELKO--" <71062.1056_at_compuserve.com> wrote in message news:c0d87ec0.0305101930.65eb8cca_at_posting.google.com...
> >>
> >>There are better ways of creating identifiers.
> >
> > But it seems pretty common that I just want to have a key,
> > and I don't care what the specific values are (as long as
> > they are unique,) and I'd like to have the system supply
> > it for me. Is there no clean way to do this?
> >
> In the worst cass scenario, the whole set of columns is your key.
> If the whole set of columns doesn't form a key, than you surely are
> making a design mistake.
>
> So you'll always have a natural key.

Ugh. So I have a table Persons with first name, last name, height, weight, DOB, and you want me to use that whole thing as a key? Not very appealing. What's wrong with a PersonId? Seriously, what's wrong with it?

Marshall Received on Sun May 11 2003 - 12:31:29 CDT