Re: A real world example

From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 22:13:35 GMT
Message-ID: <jMMEg.49144$pu3.578085@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>

kvnkrkptrck_at_gmail.com wrote:

> JOG wrote:
>

>>Bob Badour wrote:
>>
>>>[snip]
>>>By accepting his misuse of vocabulary, you encourage and legitimize the
>>>illegitimate while you interfere with communication and comprehension.
>>>Is it your goal to understand theory or to market the services of
>>>ignorants at the expense of their potential clients and other stakeholders?
>>
>>Of course not. All corrections are welcomed Bob.
>>
>>>[snip]
>>>I disagree that the concept of surrogate vs. natural is useful. A
>>>natural key is merely a familiar surrogate.
>>
>>By this I am unclear what a natural key is a surrogate for. If you
>>could spend some time expanding this definition, or referencing it, I'd
>>appreciate it.

>
> I think I see where Bob is going with this. About 6 weeks ago, my wife
> and I strung together a couple of arbitrary values, "Wade" and "James",
> appended a surname, and wound up with a new "natural key" for our
> son... or is that a surrogate key? The US government runs a database,
> and in order to add an entry for him into the database, it generated a
> new surrogate key for our son - but many people treat SSN as a "natural
> key". Presumably, our son may one day gain employment at the same
> company at which I work, in which case, he will be assigned a
> "surrogate key" employee ID. Bob's point, I think, is that there is no
> fundamental difference between the "natural key" my wife and I
> generated for our son; the SSN natural/surrogate key the US government
> generated for our son, and my company's surrogate key Emp_id.
>
> On the other hand, is my DNA sequence a "familiar surrogate key"?

What makes you think you have a single unique DNA sequence?

   It
> seems there *is* a fundamental difference between "Line 3 of invoice
> 12" and "line_id 1433" - both may be candidates for the same entity,
> yet it seems like the first should qualify as a natural key and the
> second should qualify as a surrogate... making Bob's claim that "A
> natural key is merely a familiar surrogate." seem a bit of an
> overgeneralization.

Awkwardness will impair familiarity; however, if users have to interact with line_id 1433, they will have to become familiar with it. Only by hiding line_id 1433 entirely from users can one keep users from becoming familiar with it. That works right up until the moment in time when it fails. Received on Wed Aug 16 2006 - 17:13:35 CDT