Re: Stupid Database Tricks

On May 22, 11:59 pm, Marshall <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 22, 1:48 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Every table will have a numeric id column, and this column will be the
> > primary key.

Regardless of what is intention here, it seems you and B. Badour misunderstand some important aspects of "one-column-key" as well as some aspects of "numeric". And of course key can be "alphabetic".

> I don't know why, exactly, since it's not like it's the worst one
> mentioned, but that one DRIVES ME CRAZY!

This meditation is somehow paradoxical regarding that you misunderstand some basic things:

> I hear people say this, and I want to say oh, I see: you're
> just the stupidest freaking idiot ever, is that it? Of course
> instead I say something about that being contraindicated.

> My extra special favorite: there's a table that's *just* two
> foreign keys to two different tables; a basic join table. The
> pair (key1, key2) is unique of course.

Here, you misunderstood - what is not primary key. Pair (key1, key2) is not primary key because it is not unique. Briefly your conclusion seems to arise from a misunderstanding concerning the nature of the simplest DB cases. It seems to me also, that this is source of your confusion regarding "two foreign keys".

> And oh yeah, we
> have to add an additional numeric primary key.
>
> Grrrrr.....
>
> > For performance, we enforce integrity in the application.
>
> Aiiieeee!!!
>
> Marshall

Vladimir Odrljin Received on Tue Jun 05 2007 - 14:47:43 CDT