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

From: psql(at)dgrmm(dot)net
To: "Brandon Aiken" <BAiken(at)winemantech(dot)com>
Cc: <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: IS it a good practice to use SERIAL as Primary Key?
Date: 2006-11-27 19:30:21
Message-ID: C9CCDD34-2C5A-41D1-987A-63B90EDE70A9@dgrmm.net
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On Nov 27, 2006, at 1:21 PM, Brandon Aiken wrote:
> The other argument is that it's redundant data with no real meaning to
> the domain, meaning using surrogate keys technically violates low-
> order
> normal forms.

It has real meaning in the sense that it is an internal identifier
that doesn't change. My bank set my online login to a stupid 5
letters of my name plus last four digits of SSN, and they "can not
change" it. Most likely, it is the primary key used for as a
foreign key to all the financial data. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

If, OTOH, they would go with an internal id, it would be trivial to
change the login id.

David Morton
Maia Mailguard http://www.maiamailguard.com
mortonda(at)dgrmm(dot)net

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