Re: Choosing a surrogate key vs. a composite key - "holy war" issue or clear best practice?

On Jun 28, 9:44 am, hpuxrac <johnbhur...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Yes this is a religious topic like flavors of unix and linux.

Mostly it is known as surrogate versus natural keys your terminology
seems to imply something else.

Thanks for correcting me. The same issue could be stated as synthetic
vs. natural keys. But your terminology is better paired than mine.
There are simple keys and composite keys (also known as complex keys
and concatenated keys). I tend to think of simple keys as surrogate/
synthetic, but a Social Security Number is both a simple key and a
natural key.

It's been thrown around and debated and flamed on all/most of the
major database forums numerous times. You can find several long ones
here on cdos if you search the archive ( accessible thru google groups
interface and possibly other ones ).

Thanks HP, will do. I'm trying to learn. Not push a particular agenda
and certainly not in a rude manner.

Dana
.

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