Re: Enforce primary key on every table during dev?

On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 8:18 PM, Ron Johnson <ron(dot)l(dot)johnson(at)cox(dot)net> wrote:

> On 03/01/2018 11:47 AM, Daevor The Devoted wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 2:07 PM, Rakesh Kumar <rakeshkumar464(at)aol(dot)com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> >Adding a surrogate key to such a table just adds overhead, although that
>> could be useful
>> >in case specific rows need updating or deleting without also modifying
>> the other rows with
>> >that same data - normally, only insertions and selections happen on such
>> tables though,
>> >and updates or deletes are absolutely forbidden - corrections happen by
>> inserting rows with
>> >an opposite transaction.
>>
>> I routinely add surrogate keys like serial col to a table already having
>> a nice candidate keys
>> to make it easy to join tables. SQL starts looking ungainly when you
>> have a 3 col primary
>> key and need to join it with child tables.
>>
>>
> I was always of the opinion that a mandatory surrogate key (as you
> describe) is good practice.
> Sure there may be a unique key according to business logic (which may be
> consist of those "ungainly" multiple columns), but guess what, business
> logic changes, and then you're screwed!
>
>
> And so you drop the existing index and build a new one. I've done it
> before, and I'll do it again.
>
> So using a primary key whose sole purpose is to be a primary key makes
> perfect sense to me.
>
>
> I can't stand synthetic keys. By their very nature, they're so
> purposelessly arbitrary, and allow you to insert garbage into the table.
>
> --
> Angular momentum makes the world go 'round.
>

Could you perhaps elaborate on how a surrogate key allows one to insert
garbage into the table? I'm afraid I don't quite get what you're saying.