> Plus I feel I would be remiss in not > exploring an > alternative to the serial key.
why? it is a tried and true method.
Actually, there are two reasons I think it good for someone new to SQL to explore this option. First of all, it is very educational. Secondly, it is the person who stands up and says, "I know everyone does it this way, but what if we did it that way?" who has a chance of discovering something new.
For this particular topic however, using the serial is very easy and using a hash is not only error prone but much more difficult.
It is good to see different philosophies about foreign keys though!