Peter Geoghegan wrote:
> How many lookup tables have you seen in the wild with a natural
> key?
Me? Personally? A few hundred.
> People sometimes represent things like US states as enums. This is
> probably a mistake, because you cannot control or predict if
> there'll be a new US state, unlikely though that me be.
More importantly, you're likely to need to associate properties with
the state. Sales tax info, maybe a sales manager, etc. A state
table can be a handy place to store things like that.
> I don't like the idea of having values in a table that aren't so
> much data as an integral part of your application/database.
Yep, exactly why natural keys should be used when possible.
-Kevin