Chris,

You're welcome, chris. I'm glad that someone else was able to do what I didn't seem to be able of. The whole point I was trying to make is that surrogate keys may not always be the best thing to do, and it might be wise to determine which to use one over another on a case by case basis.

I think that in the recent threads, It became clear that there no absolute rules regarding this subject and is very different from 'best practises'. Though JimB and I have disagreed very much in the past on this subject, I think, now, we agree for at least a large part. Not very long ago I've started using surrogates in most circumstances because of certain framework - developement reasons (not mentioned yet), but if I look at the older projects where I mainly used intelligent keys I did not experience much problems which could be solved with surrogate keys.

I've think I've made my point against the practise of the FORCED use of surrogate keys and therefore will rest my case.

>FWIW, I am going to eat crow here, and agree with you on one point. Surrogate keys are not always the best answer. Specifically, I am talking about the example presented by Daniel Rouloue (?). I am sure I not spelling that correctly.

>However (and you knew this was coming :-)), I still disagree with regard to Invoice #s, SSN, etc.

Well, that is matter of different viewpoints. Maybe in time I'll use surrogates for this because you take on this is more practical, maybe in time you'll see that my take on this is more practical.

We have to agree to disagree on this particular case for now.

Walter,