On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 8:35 AM, jesusthefrog <jesusthef...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On the topic of 'natural' versus 'synthetic' primary keys, I am generally > in the camp that an extra ID field won't cost you too much, and while one > may not need it for a simple table (i.e. id, name) one might add any number > of columns later, and you'll be glad to have it. > > Nothing prevents you from adding more columns if you use varchar primary keys. > > My preferred method is to give every table an ID column of UUID type and > generate a UUID using the uuid-ossp contrib module. This also prevents > someone not familiar with the database design from using an ID somewhere > they should not (as is possible with natural PKs) or treating the ID as an > integer, not an identifier (as is all too common with serial integers). > > > This would be a concern if you had multi master writes . As far as I know Postgres does not have a true multi master replication system so all the writes have to happen on one server right? As for UUIDs I use them sometimes but I tend to also use one serial column because when I am communicating with people it makes it so much easier to say "dealer number X" than "dealer number SOME_HUGE_UUID". I often have to talk to people about the data and UUIDs make it very difficult to communicate with humans.
