Re: Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys

paul c wrote:
> --CELKO-- wrote:
>

>>>> Speaking of efficiency, composite primary keys have almost no 
>>>> effect, if you get the indexes right.  <<
>>
>> Ever work with DBs that use hashing instead of tree indexes?  Longer
>> keys are better because there is less chance of a hash collision.
>> There is also a lot of work being done on minimal perfect hashing
>> right now.  This is going to be  very important for VLDB because
>> unlike indexes, a hash requires only one probe.

That's not exactly true. Most hash indexes are radix indexes. (Just another of the brilliant observations we can thank Ron Fagin for.)

A true hash has the property that performance degrades when it becomes full.

> Every so often some crackpot claims to have discovered the perfect hash
> but bigger keys usually need bigger buckets to reduce collisions. It
> reminds me of the old joke about the guy who kept re-running his
> compression program in hopes of reducing the file's size to one byte.
> Hash indexes are okay for some special purposes, such as an atm
> withdrawal system but they are more common in various interpreters. Same
> goes for column-based stores, not to mention the trans-relational
> "model". Meanwhile, cpu design has been stagnating for years, either
> improving self-created problems or being almost totally reliant on
> bio-feedback, optimizing patterns that are found in typical software
> when the typical software uses only the features of the previous
> hardware generation, then the cycle repeats with the software designers
> doing the same thing in reverse. There's still no consumer machine with
> a double-ended stack which is an obvious requirement with so many
> systems being interpretive now, the Intel segmented memory which started
> out as a hack for backwards compatibility would be tremendously useful
> on today's big memories, as ironic as that may sound. Windows and
> Linux didn't hide segments from the developer and there is no mainstream
> cpu with any kind of memory association feature beyond traditional
> physical addressing.

Beyond a double-ended stack and segmented memory, what else do you recommend? Received on Mon May 18 2009 - 20:32:14 CEST