Re: surrogate vs natural primary keys

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:34:51 -0600,
"Scott Marlowe" <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

[...]

> create table t2 (
> d1 varchar(200),
> d2 int8,
> d3 varchar(1000),
> foreign key t2_fk references t1(c1,c2) );

Thanks Scott, I guess you meant:

CREATE TABLE t2 (
d1 varchar(200),
d2 int8,
d3 varchar(1000),
PRIMARY KEY (d1, d2)
FOREIGN KEY (d1, d2) REFERENCES t1(c1, c2) );

But this makes it difficult to work with t2 because it has 2 fields that
are the same as in t1. Isn't it better to just use a surrogate key and
use a single field in t2, thereby avoiding repeating multiple pieces of
information?

Thanks,

--
Seb