Re: Building a primary key

You hit upon a big "bone of contention" in the (relational) database community: "surrogate" primary keys vs. "natural" primary keys. A sequence used as a primary key is a surrogate key. Personally, I am in favor of natural keys (let's face it: if your database models business processes there must be one or more attributes that uniquely identify an entity). But if you need or want to use surrogate keys, use sequences.

BTW, the magazine "Database Programming and Design" (highly recommended !) had a number of articles a year or two ago where various experts debated the issue of surrogate vs. natural keys.

I hope this helps.

Michael Serbanescu
Senior Consultant, MIACO Corporation Received on Fri Mar 28 1997 - 00:00:00 CST