Re: Surrogate keys (Was: enums)

[Leandro GuimarÃes Faria Corcete DUTRA <leandro(at)dutra(dot)fastmail(dot)fm>]

Jim C. Nasby <jnasby <at> pervasive.com> writes:

> a) the optimizer does a really poor job on multi-column index statistics

So it should be fixed?

And there are a *lot* of singular, natural keys.


> b) If each parent record will have many children, the space savings from
> using a surrogate key can be quite large

Not such a common case.


> c) depending on how you view things, putting actual keys all over the
> place is denormalized

How come?  Never!


> Generally, I just use surrogate keys for everything unless performance
> dictates something else.

What I am proposing is the reverse: use natural keys for everything unless 
performance dictates something else.

In support of my PoV: 
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/database/soup/archives/007327.asp?rss=1