Re: Primary key question

Richard Rowell wrote:
>
> I'm creating a database with 20 tables or so. I have come to the
> table that will likely tie many of these tables together, that is
> every single field in this table will be a foriegn key. My question
> is, rather then include all of the fields into the primary key of this
> table, and therefore include all of these fields into any table that
> will reference this one, would it be politically correct to just give
> each entry an integer as a primary key and scan for dupes in a
> trigger? It sure seems like it would cut down on the complexity of
> the whole thing...

If I understand correctly, it sounds like what you want to do is
establish a UNIQUE constraint on your foreign keys, and add a sequenced
integer to be the primary key for this table. E.G. -

CREATE TABLE test (
fkey1 INTEGER REFERENCES ...,
fkey2 INTEGER REFERENCES ...,
id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
UNIQUE(fkey1,fkey2)
);

________________________
Ron Peterson
rpeterson(at)yellowbank(dot)com