Re: Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys

"paul c" <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac> wrote in message news:0KfQl.28513$PH1.15846_at_edtnps82...
> To most people, "natural" means "physical"

That's not true in my experience. Most of the people I've dealt with tend to think a vehicle's VIN is a natural key, and a bank account's account number is a natural key. both of those entities are articificial to begin with, and therefore all their attributes are artificial. Still, your mileage may vary, if you've dealt with different people than I have.

Maybe the distinction between "natural" and "synthetic" would be clearer if we changed the labels. How about "external" versus "internal"? This still begs the question of whether I mean internal to the database or internal to the application and the database. But maybe it's a step in the right direction. How about "conceptual key" versus "logical key"? Received on Mon May 18 2009 - 19:15:44 CEST