Re: surrogate key or not?

> > Because there is no information to be had on this fact. The
> > patient IS afflicted by such or she is not. There is no why.
>
> I begin to see why I spent $2000 this spring to have a doctor tell me what
I
> *didn't* have ...

This reminds me of a project I worked on many years ago, I was pretty much
fresh out of university writing a system for a large medical practice -
itwas principally for accounting purposes. I made lots of suggestions like
Josh's, only to get replies like Karsten's. I the progammer wanted to codify
everything so as to enable data analysis (ie linking complaints and
diagnosis, etc) but the doctors wern't interested. They just wanted to write
free text comments. And the reason for it (as far as I can tell) is the
distinction between general practice and reseach (such as epidemiology). So
(GPs) are not so much searching for new knowlege in their patients records,
as applying the knowlege gained from research (done by researchers) to treat
individual patients.

Karsten might beg to differ, I don't know, but the "long flaky text" comment
triggered some old (and fond) memories ;-)

Cheers
iain