Re: Surrogate keys (Was: enums)

On Thu, Jan 19, 2006 at 09:37:12AM -0500, Pollard, Mike wrote:
> Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> > Please provides natural keys for any of the following:
> > - A Person
> > - A phone call: (from,to,date,time,duration) is not enough
> > - A physical address
> > - A phone line: (phone numbers arn't unique over time)
> > - An internet account: (usernames not unique over time either)
> Ahh, a challenge.  Hmm, not sure about all of them, but here goes:
> A Person - well, you could use a bit map of their fingerprints, or maybe
> their retinal scan.  Of course, that could change due to serious injury.
> Maybe some kind of representation of their DNA?

Yes. Representation of the DNA is probably best. But - that's a lot of
data to use as a key in multiple tables. :-)

> A physical address - how about longitude/latitude/height from sea level?

Planet? Solar system? Galaxy? Universe? :-)

I agreed with what you had to say (the stuff I deleted). Just felt
like being funny. Not sure if I'm successful. Hehe...

Cheers,
mark

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