Re: Surrogate keys (Was: enums)

On Thu, Jan 19, 2006 at 09:37:12AM -0500, Pollard, Mike wrote:
> Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> > Please provides natural keys for any of the following:
> > - A Person
> > - A phone call: (from,to,date,time,duration) is not enough
> > - A physical address
> > - A phone line: (phone numbers arn't unique over time)
> > - An internet account: (usernames not unique over time either)
> Ahh, a challenge. Hmm, not sure about all of them, but here goes:
> A Person - well, you could use a bit map of their fingerprints, or maybe
> their retinal scan. Of course, that could change due to serious injury.
> Maybe some kind of representation of their DNA?

Yes. Representation of the DNA is probably best. But - that's a lot of
data to use as a key in multiple tables. :-)

> A physical address - how about longitude/latitude/height from sea level?

Planet? Solar system? Galaxy? Universe? :-)

I agreed with what you had to say (the stuff I deleted). Just felt
like being funny. Not sure if I'm successful. Hehe...

Cheers,
mark

--
mark(at)mielke(dot)cc / markm(at)ncf(dot)ca / markm(at)nortel(dot)com __________________________
. . _ ._ . . .__ . . ._. .__ . . . .__ | Neighbourhood Coder
|\/| |_| |_| |/ |_ |\/| | |_ | |/ |_ |
| | | | | \ | \ |__ . | | .|. |__ |__ | \ |__ | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them...

http://mark.mielke.cc/