Re: Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys

Tony Toews [MVP] wrote:
....
Preumably though there are bar codes on the cargo containers and a simple form where
the cargo master can remove selected containers from the airplane.

A welding shop client that empoyed hundreds of welders built and assembled very
complex piping assemblies for refineries, power plants and oil sands plants. These
are designed to, usually, fit on a 50' flat bed trailer. The client number could be
in excess of 20 or 25 characters. The internal number they used went from 1 to
whatever. It in turn was prefixed with a job number which started at 1 and went to
whatever. The system printed multiple weather proof tag with the internal number as
well as the bar coded long client number.

(Occasionally they would have to rebuild a particular item. The gravel pad at one
client where these are stored is about a mile square. Well, if the plant has a
large expansion, and there's a lot of snow that winter, you can't find the
assemblies. Until the expansion is finished a year or two later and you're
looking at the excess assemblies which are laying on the gravel.. And the folks at
the plant getting paid $25 and $30 an hour love being told to go through all the
items on this gravel pad looking for particular assemblies. A great way to spend a
shift rather than hauling stuff around or whatever.)

The people who make international freight regulations remind me of the Canadian food inspectors from thirty years ago who assigned government grades for the mandated labels of canned vegetables - Canada Fancy, Choice or Standard. At the unloading dock, they would put a pea in their mouth and decide on the spot. Yanks had a gizmo called a 'tenderometer' whereas much in Canada depended on how hung-over the inspector was. I used to know a bit of what went on at the IATA so-called standards meetings and from their results I conclude the meetings were much similar to those of the SQL standards committee, basically add every arcane, legacy, idiotic feature that the sponsoring companies had in their products or systems..


From what I saw fifteen or so years ago I think it was and probably still is generally true that the 'business experts' and other 'users' in the freight, customs, forwarding, warehousing and transportation businesses are not capable of deciding all requirements because most of them are stuck in the rut of their own past practices. When a designer is exposed to this, a moment's thought should be enough to see that the different parties operate from distinct concepts. Faced with this, a db designer must ask questions like "what is a shipment?", "what is a location?", as far as the system, not the application, is concerned, and these questions need to be asked not to the individual parties but in the context of everything the system must do. Some abstract key like 'shipment id' is sure to result, but the waybill numbers, flight segment keys, container ids, order ids, et cetera, et cetera must also persist.


If what I remember resembles real life, what does the db designer do in the face of enterprise experts who don't get it? There is only one way to do it and that is to go over the heads of the experts. That is a good way to risk contracts, but from what I saw the safest way to do it was start from the very top. However, the technical lingo doesn't get you anywhere in front of the board of directors. In my opinion, practical db design for large apps requires people who have multiple talents, enough gumption to make their point, but no more. An ignorant CEO might palm you off to numbskulls or you might get lucky and meet an underling who is actually running the business if not in name. Either way it buys you time to either find another job or another contract. Or one could just play it safe, go with the flow and preserve one's income indefinitely, but of course no such person would be posting on c.d.t!
.

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