Jim,

>I have to differ with you here, E. F. Codd, the inventor of the relational model, said "Intelligent keys aren't!" I don't force anyone to do anything, I do share my experience with folks and on this issue my experience tells me there are a number of benefits of surrogate keys over natural keys and there are no benefits to natural keys other than one less field in the table structure and no need to generate the values. However, natural keys have a major problem in that their value means something other than simply identifying a record and therefore they are subject to having the value changed for reasons that have nothing to do with their role as primary key.

Natural Key's just seems more natural to me: it represents more of the natural world it should represent. Much of the problems you're referring to are of a technical matter. I simply choose for a more logical solution even if this means a bit more difficult technical implementation.

It seems pointless to start this all over again. Let's leave it that we agree to disagree in this field.

Walter,