I am in the middle of an interesting "Data Architecture" discussion at a place I am contracting & need some input.
As a habit, I always create a Surrogate Key as the Primary Key in my tables - be they Guid (UUID) or Identity values. IMHO the synthetic-nature of a Surrogate Key has the distinct value of identifying a row without intruding on "real" or "natural" keys-or-values that may otherwise be useful Alternate Keys.
To me...it just seems natural - but maybe I am wrong.
Where I happen to be at the moment...they argue this good for "core"Entity tables, but is completely incorrect for Many-to-Many (relationship) tables. While I will happily to oblige the customer...I disagree.
Thoughts behind my approach are:
- A primary key value must be unique
- The primary key should be as compact as possible
- Primary key value should be stable
- Primary Key identifies a tuple...not the data INSIDE the tuple
MY QUESTION: Which is either correct or better? And Why?
- Please provide reasoning etc.
NOTE:
Please Ignore the ID column naming in the samples below...that is how they do it here.
