Re: IS it a good practice to use SERIAL as Primary Key?

From: "Joshua D(dot) Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
To: Ron Johnson <ron(dot)l(dot)johnson(at)cox(dot)net>
Cc: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: IS it a good practice to use SERIAL as Primary Key?
Date: 2006-11-28 00:52:40
Message-ID: 1164675160.6398.39.camel@localhost.localdomain
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On Mon, 2006-11-27 at 18:14 -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
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> On 11/27/06 17:25, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > On Mon, 2006-11-27 at 17:09 -0600, John McCawley wrote:
> [snip]
> > users
> > =====
> > id serial unique,
> > first_name text,
> > last_name text,
> > primary key (first_name,last_name)
> >
> > Yes there are problems with the above, namely you will likely have more
> > than one joshua drake.
>
> Right, and then the question gets to: how do you create a "good"
> user id? Many prefer serial types; I prefer something that is not a
> monotonically incrementing scalar.

Well what is wrong with using just a serial or bigserial? In that case
specifically?

You could... if you really wanted to...

select md5(id||first_name||last_name) from id;

;)

Joshua D. Drake

>
> - --
> Ron Johnson, Jr.
> Jefferson LA USA
>
> Is "common sense" really valid?
> For example, it is "common sense" to white-power racists that
> whites are superior to blacks, and that those with brown skins
> are mud people.
> However, that "common sense" is obviously wrong.
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