Re: pervasiveness of surrogate (also called synthetic) keys

On 03/05/11 12:57, Rob Sargent wrote:

> Hm.. Virtual machines as assets.  Mortgage backed securities, anyone.

Well, sure ... but the software running on them is tracked as part of
licensing compliance efforts, whether or not the virtual hardware its
self is an "asset" its self. The DB designer chose to use the host's MAC
address to identify the host, and the tracking software can't tell the
difference between a VM and a physical host.

The other problem with that is that it doesn't deal well with
multi-homed hosts. All in all, it's just a dumb design, and was fixed a
while ago, but it's an illustration of how something that seems like an
obvious natural key doesn't always stay one.

--
Craig Ringer