[AccessD] OT: The Great Primary Debate

Hi Charlotte

What a nightmare. This should terminate the discussion.

/gustav


> Those who prefer autonumbers are in favor of simplicity.  If you've
> ever designed databases using a design tool like ERWin or Visio or any
> other tool for designing the data/entity structure, you quickly discover
> what a mess compound keys can be.  In Access table design, it looks like
> you're just creating a link between comparable fields in two tables.
> When you use a design tool, you get a different take on it.  Visio 5 and
> before only allowed you to create unique field names in a database
> structure.  That meant that if you had ABCID in one table, you couldn't
> create it in another, so it you wanted it there as a foreign key, you
> created a relationship and the tool inserted the field in the other
> table.  However, if it's part of a unique key but not in itself unique,
> you can't enforce RI on just that specific field, so you wind up
> dragging *all* the fields in the compound key to the other table to
> create the relationship.  If that key happens to be part of the primary
> or unique key in the other table, then you wind up with an even bigger
> key to connect to some other table.  It starts to snowball and you can
> wind up with 6 or 7 fields in a PK, which is ridiculous.  Those who opt
> for "natural" keys, want a key they can look at and recognize
> conveniently.  No one in their right mind is going to do that on
> millions of records voluntarily when something goes wrong, so where's
> the advantage?