otoh, there's plenty of places where natural keys are optimal.   my 
company makes widgets, and we make damn sure our serial #s and part 
numbers are unique, and we use them as PK's for the various tables.   
further, the PN has a N digit prefix which is unique to a part family, 
then a M digit suffix which identifies a specific version of that PN.   
we use the N digit PN for the family tables, and the full N+M digit PN 
for the full PN tables.   serial # is globally unique across all PNs so 
its the PK of any table related directly to a widget.

In response to

• Re: pervasiveness of surrogate (also called synthetic) keys at 2011-05-03 03:07:55 from Greg Smith

Responses

• Re: pervasiveness of surrogate (also called synthetic) keys at 2011-05-03 04:53:30 from Rob Sargent
• Re: pervasiveness of surrogate (also called synthetic) keys at 2011-05-03 06:11:15 from Greg Smith

pgsql-general by date

Next:	From: Craig Ringer	Date: 2011-05-03 04:53:07
	Subject: Re: pervasiveness of surrogate (also called synthetic) keys
Previous:	From: Greg Smith	Date: 2011-05-03 03:07:55
	Subject: Re: pervasiveness of surrogate (also called synthetic) keys