>Erik,
>
>I've got a good one on this. How about this for a nightmare waiting to happen?
>

< snip >

This makes my point exactly. I have dealt with several scenarios where the natural key was made up of at least as many fields as the table you describe. Even if you say 'well obviously you should use a surrogate in these situations' then you've now got a heterogenous strategy. What's the limit on the number of fields you are willing to tolerate in your key? How did you choose this limit? Arbitrarily?

The only way I see to have a consistent strategy that works well in all situations is to use surrogate keys _Everywhere_.