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

Excellent example.  Thank you Booth.

We use a packaged application that actually uses dates on the employee 
name.  This name was good from here to here, this name was good from here 
to here, this name is not good until they get married x months out. 
Although as a general rule we discourage people from putting in the future 
activations.  We wouldn't want to be forced to use the I/O modules and not 
be able to chain directly to the file, or use simple reporting tools. 
Right Joe?   :-)

Rob Berendt
-- 
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." 
Benjamin Franklin 




"Booth Martin" <Booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 
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11/17/2003 03:03 PM
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Re: the idea of unique primary keys to be a solution that hasoutlived its 
usefulness?






Sure. a master file of customer names and addresses. How many primary
addresses can there be? Perhaps not hundreds, but certainly there can 
easily
be a dozen. Even defining various kinds of addresses as differing record
types isn't enough of a differentiation. Some solution is needed that does
not rely on uniqueness.
 
Obviously that raises the question of "Well, then where do we mail the
invoice if there can be more than one invoice address?" Fair question. But
what do you do if there are seasonal addresses for the person? What if 
they
have a winter address and a summer address? Do you use their season as 
part
of the key, to create uniqueness? 
 
 
---------------------------------------------------------
Booth Martin http://www.MartinVT.com
Booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx
---------------------------------------------------------
 
-------Original Message-------
 
From: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Date: 11/17/03 13:46:45
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: the idea of unique primary keys to be a solution that
hasoutlived its usefulness?
 
I understand what you are saying, but can you give a business example of a
file that expanded like this?
 
Rob Berendt
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
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