Re: Trend towards artificial keys (GUIDs) sez my textbook...is AI next?

On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 03:13:12 -0800 (PST), raylopez99 wrote:

>On Dec 15, 2:30 pm, Hugo Kornelis
><h..._at_perFact.REMOVETHIS.info.INVALID> wrote:
>
>> If this is the book I think it is (Pro SQL Server 2005 yadda yadda),
>> then please do me -or rather yourself- a favor and stop trying to learn
>> database theory from it. There are a lot of things that Louis and I
>> agree on, but database theory is definitely not among them. Parts of his
>> book are useful, the art is figuring out which parts.
>>
>> Best, Hugo
>
>Hugo are you famous? "Louis and I"? I should start hanging out here
>more often!

Hi Ray,

Heh! No, I hope not. But neither do I consider Louis to be famous.

I have met Louis a couple of times, we sometimes exchange mails, and we read (and sometimes comment on) each other's blogs. That why I know what subjects we do and don't agree on.

(snip)
> in other parts of the book Louis says he sometimes posts in
>Usenet groups, perhaps or in particular even this one--RL

Not this one. Louis hangs around in groups specific to SQL Server. And I believe that he nowadays spends more times in web Forums and less on Usenet, but I'm not entirely sure.

>So, from this passage, I think the author does a good job disclaiming
>the slavish use of GUIDs without understanding their drawbacks, even
>after the author said he's a "big fan" of such GUIDs.

True. But in the rest of his book, he adds a surrogate key (either GUID or IDENTITY) to every entity before and without considering whether one is needed. I believe that logical design should be done completely without surrogate keys. They MIGHT be introduced during physical design, but not before.

Best, Hugo Received on Mon Dec 17 2007 - 00:00:40 CET