I never use natural keys either. The possibilities that the user has entered data that could result in a duplicate key is too great, IMO.

>They are clearly two different tasks, but I'll let you off the hook. ;) Here's some food for thought, though. If natural keys are used they certainly would exceed 16 bytes after a child table. So guids are better than natural keys even for joins.
>
>Here's a way to offset some of the performance issues.
>
>http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=25862
>
>Thanks for your time!