Should every table have a single-field surrogate/artificial primary key?
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I understand one benefit of surrogate/artificial keys in general - they do not change and that can be very convenient. This is true whether they are single or multiple field - as long as they are 'artificial'.
However, it sometimes seems to be a matter of policy to have an auto-incrementing integer field as the primary key of each table. Is this always the best idea to have such a **single-field** key and why (or why not)?
To be clear, this question is not about artificial vs natural - but about whether all artificial keys should be **single-field**
Asked by Jack Douglas
(40537 rep)
Sep 23, 2011, 09:25 PM
Last activity: Mar 18, 2018, 12:50 PM
Last activity: Mar 18, 2018, 12:50 PM