> Any discussion of pro's/con's related to data-types, > maintenance, > performance is appreciated.
My policy is that every table gets an autonumbered, non-meaningful primary key. Very occasionally, I will "succumb" to the allure of a two -FK-column primary key if I believe the table will not have any children. I often come to regret it. Personally, I would recommend always putting that single-column autonumbered primary key on the table. If you want to enforce uniqueness for the foreign keys, create a two-column unique key on them. One case in which I don't use autonumbered keys is for code tables which I do not plan on allowing the user to change. For instance, a payments type table might look like this: CHK Check CS Cash CC Credit Card The reason is that I won't have to join the payment type table to the transaction table in order to print the payment type -- I can just print the CHK, CS, or CC code. -- Larry __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business $15K Web Design Giveaway http://promotions.yahoo.com/design_giveaway/
