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  2. RPG400-L
  3. November 2003

Re: the idea of unique primary keys to be a solution that hasoutlived its usefulness?


On Tuesday, November 18, 2003, at 07:54 AM, Booth Martin wrote:

I am curious if i am alone on my thoughts about unique keys. If there is a
very loud silence we will know that unique keys is the answer. Is there
other ways to have various addresses without using defined record types as
part of the key.

I guess that since there were no replies to this among the 253 mailing list messages (all from midrange.com lists) I received this morning that indicates silence. No wonder I can't get any work done :)

I interpreted your original statement to mean you have multiple records for the same customer in the customer master file where the only difference between those records is the address information.

CUSNBR     CUSNAM    CUSADR          ADRTYP
12345      Fred Nurk 123 Main Street   L
12345      Fred Nurk PO Box 27         P
12345      Fred Nurk Warehouse 1       D

Database normalisation would suggest that your multiple addresses for a single customer should be moved to a separate file. Thus the customer master file contains the unique values and the different addresses are located in a customer address file keyed on customer number and address type.

CUSNBR    CUSNAM
12345     Fred Nurk

CUSNBR    CUSADR          ADRTYP
12345     123 Main Street   L
12345     PO Box 27         P
12345     Warehouse 1       D

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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