[AccessD] OT: The Great Primary Debate

No, I'd say that the answer to this unspoken question is that if they fear
the corruption of the PK field then why on earth are they storing ANY
information in a database at all? If one field can be magically corrupted
then so can all the others.

Lambert

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Lawhon, Alan C Contractor/Morgan Research
> [SMTP:alan.lawhon at us.army.mil]
> Sent:	Wednesday, June 02, 2004 8:51 AM
> To:	'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
> Subject:	RE: [AccessD] OT: The Great Primary Debate
> 
> Martin, Susan, John, Jim, Charlotte, Drew, Gustav, et al:
> 
> I think there is another factor involved in this "AutoNumber versus
> Natural
> Key" PK debate.  For lack of a better word or terminology, I'm going to
> refer to it as the "Fear Factor" or a fuzzy type of generalized
> apprehension.
> This "apprehension" boils down to something along the lines of, "Well,
> what
> happens if the AutoNumber field gets corrupted or somehow those
> autonumbers
> get jumbled or out-of-sequence?  If that happens, then how do we
> re-establish
> the primary keys and make sure they're associated with the correct
> records?"
> (The more records there are in a table, the more heightened this fear or
> apprehension tends to be.)
> 
> The answer to this [unspoken] question is that they would rather avoid the
> possibility altogether by using non-Autonumber composite (i.e. "Natural")
> primary keys.  It appears, from my experience, that folks who have not
> been
> trained in database theory seem to have an intuitive preference for
> natural
> keys - even when such "natural" keys involve the concatenation of two (or
> more!) fields - with all the headaches that come from trying to manage
> such
> an unweildy arrangement.
> 
> I have experienced this issue firsthand here at work.  We are managing a
> substantial (several million record) environmental database with multiple
> linked tables, numerous views, action queries, macros, et cetera ...  This
> application requires primary and foreign keys in nearly all of the base
> tables.  Early on we tried to persuade the senior project engineer, (a
> chemical engineer by profession), of the wisdom of using single-field
> AutoNumbers for the PK in the most important table of the application.
> He adamantly refused, insisting on a two-field composite primary key.
> We did our best to try and persuade him that an autonumber PK was best,
> but he wouldn't hear it.  Since this engineer has major input into our
> performance appraisals, the programming staff acquiesced.  We decided to
> live with a "composite" PK - even if we didn't like it or agree with it.
> 
> After giving this a great deal of thought, I have come to the conclusion
> that folks who prefer "natural" (composite) PKs do so due to a general
> apprehension or mistrust of AutoNumbers.  I don't think it is a
> "technical"
> issue, but rather a "people issue" centering around fear and apprehension.
> Whenever one sees a strong visceral reaction, (such as what Martin saw
> yesterday), this tends to reinforce my perception that this is more of
> a "people problem" than a purely "technical" problem.
> 
> Does this make any sense to the rest of you?
> 
> Alan C. Lawhon
>