Re: enums

On Fri, 2005-10-28 at 16:28 -0500, Jim C. Nasby wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2005 at 04:36:26PM -0400, Rod Taylor wrote:
> > On Fri, 2005-10-28 at 15:21 -0500, Jim C. Nasby wrote:
> > > On Fri, Oct 28, 2005 at 02:57:03PM -0400, Rod Taylor wrote:
> > > > The basic idea is that most of us break out schemas by creating fake
> > > > primary keys for the purpose of obtaining performance because using the
> > > > proper primary key (single or multiple columns) is often very slow.
> > > >
> > > > The automatic and transparent creation of a surrogate key by PostgreSQL
> > > > would allow us to dramatically clean up the presentation of our schema
> > > > to the users using the database without the performance hit we currently
> > > > get.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > It puts surrogate keys (fake primary keys) back to the level of table
> > > > spaces, indexes and other performance enhancements where they belong.
> > >
> > > Ahh. Yes, that would definately be great to have. Although it would
> > > probably take me months if not years to get used to not seeing a bunch
> > > of _id fields laying all over the place...
> > >
> > > Is SURROGATE part of any of the ANSI specs?
> >
> > No, but neither is an index, rollback segment, or table space. The ANSI
> > spec doesn't usually deal with performance tweaks that are the
> > responsibility of the DBA.
>
> True, but none of those other things you mention affect external
> representation of data. But I was more wondering if we were inventing
> syntax on the fly here or not...

It isn't supposed to impact the external representation of the data and
generally neither is an ENUM outside of the potential sorting ability. I
was just getting the impression that the big push for enums was to be
able to use a 'real word' but without a performance hit.

A regular old table, foreign key to a varchar gives you the 'real word'
and the surrogate key allows you to do so without a performance hit.

--