Path: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu!spool.maxwell.syr.edu!drn.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!tethys.csu.net!nntp.csufresno.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-11!sn-xit-12!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: DA Morgan Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.databases.oracle.server Subject: Re: Beginner help needed in database design Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2005 09:17:44 -0800 Organization: Ye 'Ol Disorganized NNTPCache groupie Message-ID: <1107364501.962688@yasure> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <1106842617.933021@yasure> <1107199784.292798@yasure> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cache-Post-Path: yasure!unknown@oracle.advtechserv.com X-Cache: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 33 Xref: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu comp.databases:43235 comp.databases.oracle.server:234813 Frank van Bortel wrote: > DA Morgan wrote: > >> Frank van Bortel wrote: >> >>> One thing strikes as odd: primary keys are a techie thingy, something >>> most database systems need internally; it's not a design, nor a logical >>> thing - it's the implementation. >> >> >> >> Whoa ... time out. Excuse me. And utterly untrue. No database I can >> think of "needs" a primary key. Common sense, data integrity, >> performance, and scalability demand them. >> >> Everything else you said made sense so where did this come from? > > Right - wrong word. > > There's no need to use primary keys, but -if used- a primary > key is a technical aspect, not a conceptual or modelling (or > modeling for the other English speakers) thing. > > Hope that's more like it, and apologize for any confusion My faith is restored. Thanks. -- Daniel A. Morgan University of Washington damorgan@x.washington.edu (replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)