From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org [mailto:pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Melvin Davidson Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2015 8:18 PM To: Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> Cc: Jerry Sievers <gsievers19@comcast.net>; John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com>; pgsql-general@postgresql.org Subject: Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL Developer Best Practices
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Before ANYONE continues to insist that a serial id column is good, consider the case where the number of tuples will exceed a bigint.
Don't say it cannot happen, because it can.
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Melvin Davidson
Now, it’s easy to overcome this limitation.
You just make concatenated PK (id1, id2) with both columns of BIGINT type.
In general, I see the main advantage of artificial PK in NO NEED to change multiple child tables, when NATURAL key changes in the parent table. And I never saw a system where NATURAL key wouldn’t need to be changed eventually.
So, my conclusion: use artificial PK (for db convenience) and unique NATURAL key (for GUI representation).
