NB the attribution colours seems to be mixed up a bit here, but this all
dialogue between me & Adrian.
On 26/08/15 09:48, Adrian Klaver wrote:
> On 08/25/2015 02:23 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>> On 26/08/15 08:56, Adrian Klaver wrote:
[...]
>>> have all gone to the same seminar on how to be Walmart and decided
>>> they did not want unique numbers, but UPCs tied to price groups that
>>> covered a variety of plants. Luckily, I was too stupid to
>> Natural Stupidity??? :-)
>
> Oh yeah and a long history too, but that needs at least a pitcher of
> beer to recount.
Well if you're ever in Auckland, I'll shout you a beer!
(We might even put you up for a night or two.)
>
>>
>> (Sorry, couldn't resist!)
>>
>>> know surrogate keys where bad and had a sequence attached to the tag
>>> table. This then became the tag id and made life a lot easier during
>>> the transition. It still remains there, because people are people and
>>> 'natural' tends to be artificial and transient.
>> Extremely good examples, I'll bear them in mind - makes me even more
>> keen on surrogate primary keys. I'm always very wary when people tell
>> me some numbering scheme will NEVER change!!!
>
> To add a recent one. My partner Nancy signed up for Medicare last year
> to avoid the premium penalty. This year in July she signed up for
> Social Security. Turns out, for reasons I do not understand,
> CMS(https://www.cms.gov/) changes the Medicare account number at that
> point. The reason we even cared is that the billing system thinks she
> has two accounts and is double billing. Time on the phone with someone
> at CMS was not enlightening. We where told to trust the system and
> eventually it will work itself out. Still waiting:(
STOP IT!!! You're making me even more cynical and paranoid! :-)