Re: primary key and existing unique fields

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Sally Sally wrote:
>
>> Can you please elaborate on the point you just made as to why the
>> primary key should not relate to the data (even for a case when there
>> is an existing unique field that can be used to identify the record)
>>
>
> Here is a good article on the topic:
>
> http://www.devx.com/ibm/Article/20702

That article makes me want to vomit uncontrollably! ;-)

"Business data might also simply be bad -- glitches in the Social
Security Administration's system may lead to different persons having
the same Social Security Number. A surrogate key helps to isolate the
system from such problems."

The surrogate key isn't solving the underlying logical inconsistency
problem. It is being used as a work-around to cover one up. I suspect
the author of being a MySQL user.

Mike Mascari