Re: enums

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...
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461