Re: [GENERAL] Primary keys for companies and people

2006-02-02 Thread Leif B. Kristensen
On Thursday 02 February 2006 09:05, Michael Glaesemann wrote: >For people I'm more or less stumped. I can't think of a combination >of things that I know I'll be able to get from people that I'll want >to be able to add to the database. Starting off we'll have at least >7,000 individuals in the da

Re: [GENERAL] Primary keys for companies and people

2006-02-02 Thread David Goodenough
On Thursday 02 February 2006 09:07, Leif B. Kristensen wrote: > On Thursday 02 February 2006 09:05, Michael Glaesemann wrote: > >For people I'm more or less stumped. I can't think of a combination > >of things that I know I'll be able to get from people that I'll want > >to be able to add to the da

Re: [GENERAL] Primary keys for companies and people

2006-02-02 Thread Martijn van Oosterhout
On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 10:36:54AM +, David Goodenough wrote: > > Still, I'm struggling with the basic concept of /identity/, eg. is the > > William Smith born to John Smith and Jane Doe in 1733, the same William > > Smith who marries Mary Jones in the same parish in 1758? You may never > > rea

Re: [GENERAL] Primary keys for companies and people

2006-02-02 Thread Ted Byers
- Original Message - From: "Leif B. Kristensen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 4:07 AM Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Primary keys for companies and people [snip] I'm very interested to hear what other use in their applications for holding

Re: [GENERAL] Primary keys for companies and people

2006-02-02 Thread Leif B. Kristensen
On Thursday 02 February 2006 21:09, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote: >To the GP, your page is an interesting one and raises several >interesting points. In particular the one about the "person" being the >conclusion of the rest of the database. You essentially have a set of >facts "A married B in C on

Re: [GENERAL] Primary keys for companies and people

2006-02-02 Thread Merlin Moncure
> > I should perhaps be posting this under another subject, but I feel that > > beneath the surface, Michael's problem and my own are strongly related. > There is also the problem that a name can change. People change names > by deed-poll, and also women can adopt a married name or keep their old

Re: [GENERAL] Primary keys for companies and people

2006-02-02 Thread Michael Glaesemann
On Feb 3, 2006, at 7:25 , Merlin Moncure wrote: There is also the problem that a name can change. People change names by deed-poll, and also women can adopt a married name or keep their old one. All in all an ID is about the only answer. I'll take the other side of this issue. The fact

Re: [GENERAL] Primary keys for companies and people

2006-02-02 Thread Mark Dilger
Michael Glaesemann wrote: Hello, all! Recently there was quite a bit of discussion regarding surrogate keys and natural keys. I'm not interested in discussing the pros and cons of surrogate keys. What I'd like to find out are the different methods people actually use to uniquely identify c

Re: [GENERAL] Primary keys for companies and people

2006-02-03 Thread Merlin Moncure
> I definitely agree with you here, Merlin. Mutability is not the issue > at hand. May I ask what strategies you use for determining uniqueness > for people? Well, that depends on the particular problem at hand. If you had two john smiths in your system, how would you distinguish them? If you ass

Re: [GENERAL] Primary keys for companies and people

2006-02-06 Thread Michael Glaesemann
On Feb 4, 2006, at 2:23 , Merlin Moncure wrote: If you kind determine an easy natural differentiator, invent one: create table contact ( account text, name text, memo text, primary key(account, name, memo) ); The memo field is blank in most cases unlees it's needed. Suppose you were filli

Re: [GENERAL] Primary keys for companies and people

2006-02-07 Thread John D. Burger
Leif B. Kristensen wrote: Still, I'm struggling with the basic concept of /identity/, eg. is the William Smith born to John Smith and Jane Doe in 1733, the same William Smith who marries Mary Jones in the same parish in 1758? You may never really know. Still, collecting such disparate "facts" un