Re: Surrogate Keys: an Implementation Issue

[big snip]

> What does that have to do with the
> fact that Bob just updated the wrong row?

The wrong row? What was wrong about it? The database was told, for example, "Make Suzie's record look like this."

The confusion arising because "Suzie is George and William is Suzie but Bob thought George was still Suzie" isn't going away just because you slap another value on all your records; you're just moving the confusion around.

Surrogates aren't going to solve the problems stemming from the fact that Bob is working on a stale and partly wrong representation of the data.

> How could you prevent that in
> application code, or in the middle-tier? You can't, unless you either (1)
> lock the row until Bob gets back from Tahiti, or (2) use a surrogate to
> guarantee that the row that's about to be updated is the same as the one
> that was read out.

Your list is too short; there are more alternatives. We don't have to wait for Bob and a surrogate isn't going to solve the problem without creating another problem.

>

>>You are a vociferous ignoramus. It suffices to observe that fact.
>>
>>[remaining nonsense snipped without further effort]