Peter Geoghegan wrote: > How many lookup tables have you seen in the wild with a natural > key? Me? Personally? A few hundred.
> People sometimes represent things like US states as enums. This is > probably a mistake, because you cannot control or predict if > there'll be a new US state, unlikely though that me be. More importantly, you're likely to need to associate properties with the state. Sales tax info, maybe a sales manager, etc. A state table can be a handy place to store things like that. > I don't like the idea of having values in a table that aren't so > much data as an integral part of your application/database. Yep, exactly why natural keys should be used when possible. -Kevin -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
