Re: Sequence Numbers as Primary Keys

: jhagans_at_telerama.lm.com (^^^^^^^) wrote:

: >Recently at work ,there has been a controversy between the application development
: >group (IT) and the database administration group (DBA) concerning using sequence
: >numbers as primary keys and hence as foreign keys in the appropriate table.

Okay, so it's opinion time:

Your dba gang is not being reasonable. It sounds like they *think* they are being purists. If you analyze the history of business systems - pre-computer - there have always been such numbers. We use them to identify customers, vendors, inventory items, etc. Sometimes we try to structure them heirarchically, with fields that mean various things (location, type, region, acquisition source, etc), but they are still arbitrary numbers used to uniquely identify a record. Quite legit.

The idea PK should be the smallest, unique identifier of a piece of data (record, row, whatever). Oracle's sequence is a gift to those of us that design. Use them in good health. Tell your 'purists' to lighten up and let the system work.

Roger Snowden
snowden_at_haven.ios.com
snowdenr_at_boystown.org Received on Wed Sep 27 1995 - 00:00:00 CET