Re: Alternative to serial primary key

On 7/7/06, Andrew Sullivan <ajs(at)crankycanuck(dot)ca> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 06, 2006 at 05:18:16PM -0400, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:
> > owns/resides there in a situation where the address can never be
> > changed, e.g. "521 Main" splitting into "521A Main" and "521B Main."
>
> And anyone who has looked at an even moderately old city map will
> tell you that even this "impossible case" is by no means impossible.
>

Actually for my purposes it doesn't matter, I'm using a freeform
address string to index a lat/long. I fully expect to have multiple
unique addresses with a duplicate lat/long, i.e. the location doesn't
change - only the name of it. I'm personally hoping not to be around
long enough for geological events to change the physical location but
living in the shaky isles anything is possible.

Thanks again to all who have responded. I guess I'm probably labouring
the point but it's been instructive at least. Being fairly new to
database design I wanted to have enough info to be confident with my
approach.

Dave