Re: Separate PK in Jxn Tbl?

From: Sylvain Lafontaine <"Sylvain>
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:30:31 -0500
Message-ID: <OsZs8NdYIHA.4160_at_TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl>


Bof, if you live in a perfect world, one with infinite budget and infinite time to do any project, then I understand your concerns.

However, in my case and probably in the case of Tony Toews - but I cannot vouch for sur for him - I don't live in such a world. First of all, if I were to live in a perfect world, I wouldn't have to work to earn a living in the first place. Second, you cannot codifying everything for a variety of reasons: budget, system already in place and working well, impossibility to anticipate everything, more art than a science, etc., etc.

I have a client who has such a system at the moment as one critical part of their business process, this system is working well at the moment and has done so for many years; it would probably make your teeth gnashing but it's not on their radar at this moment to change it. Why would they pay to change something that had worked well for them for many years and at the risk of finding themselves at the front of something new that might not work as well as the one system? To give pleasure to people like Celko? If I were to tell them that Celko would like to see them changing their system, they would probably tell that if Celko was to bring them a check to pay for the change, then maybe they would give it a try.

In this message, you can replace the name of Celko with the name of a lot of persons around here but not with mine.

-- 
Sylvain Lafontaine, ing.
MVP - Technologies Virtual-PC
E-mail: sylvain aei ca (fill the blanks, no spam please)


"Jamie Collins" <jamiecollins_at_xsmail.com> wrote in message 
news:0620febc-be3d-4c68-98e4-d8896415285c_at_i72g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 27, 9:59 pm, "Sylvain Lafontaine" <sylvain aei ca (fill the
blanks, no spam please)> wrote:

> « But many of them seem to write as if contents as determined by
> ddress ».
>
> The content is not determined by the address and in fact, for those who
> are
> using surrogate keys, the exact value of an address inside the database
> has
> zero importance.
For you maybe. In a recent thread on this subject, Tony Toews Access MVP qualified that he liked using incremental autonumbers (rather than random) because they where easier to type (WHERE ID = -2001736589 may encourage typos) and easier to drop into conversation ("Hello Tony? I'm seeing a problem with the record where the ID is -2001736589..."). Did I mention that I sincerely appreciate Tony's honesty? Also consider the amount of posts we see in the Access groups asking to reseeding autonumbers, gaps in sequences, etc. Wrong mental model, perhaps, but the mentality certainly exists. Jamie. --
Received on Mon Jan 28 2008 - 18:30:31 CET

Original text of this message