Re:Mistakes Beginners Make When Working with Databases
by ryanbrunner on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @02:47PM
(#11864568)
Concatenating helps you with uniqueness, but not with whether things change (if anything that's part of a composite key changes, it can no longer reliably be part of a key). And it's the changing part that's not realistic with natural keys.
Once you get into application ids / timestamps / whatever you're no longer really using a natural key in my mind, you're just making your own algorithm for a surrogate key.
Once you get into application ids / timestamps / whatever you're no longer really using a natural key in my mind, you're just making your own algorithm for a surrogate key.