On Tuesday 12 June 2001 07:11, Koivu, Lisa wrote:
> Well, here's one problem - there is no guarantee that Social Security
> Number will indeed be unique. SS#'s are reassigned, just like phone
> numbers are.
My experience with SSN's in the insurance business is that they make
a terrible key.
> IMHO, surrogate keys are always a good idea. Has anyone got an example of
> when a surrogate key is NOT a good idea?
The only real downfall of surrogate keys is that it may require a developer
to do a join on the FK to the parent table to get the unique key information.
A small tradeoff in my opinion, since surrogate keys reduce the complexity
and column count in joins.
Duhvelopers complain because they have do do *any* joins, but that's
to be expected.
Real developers know the benefits.
If we really want to have a full blown discussion on this, we should
start a new thread.
Oh look, I just did. :)
Jared
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