Re: Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys

Walter Mitty wrote:
...
> An even stronger claim would be the claim that all designs that are NOT
> based on a synthetic auto-generated key are somehow defective designs. I've
> not seen this claim in exactly these words over in stackoverflow.com. But
> some of the comments seem to me to imply that the author of the comment
> holds this view.
> ...

That is the ultimate implication of many of these cookie-cutter doctrines, aimed at people who can't bake in the first place. I also blame supercilious managements. As for the systems they depend on, what makes me think I must be watching the Three Stooges let loose in db land, is supporting generated keys on base tables but not on views. I don't object to a system optionally providing keys, for the same reason as I don't object to users defining keys when it suits their purpose. As long as a system has a formal definition and not an informal mystical one, doesn't bother me. Candidate key generation for views seems so useful to me, eg., for quota queries and a couple of other reasons that I forget at the moment that I can't for the life of me see why it should be deprecated in and of itself. Reminds me of one of the britcoms I was watching last night where the union thought to sabotage management by blocking the toilets and one of the actresses mispronounced on purpose, saying that was cutting off our noses to spite our feces. Received on Fri May 22 2009 - 01:49:24 CEST