James,

>>>I think that's why they have cascading updates. <g>
>>
>>One problem with cascading updates is that what do you do when you are talking about HUGE databases, with hundreds of tables linked by the intelligent key, each with many, many records. Possibly a lot of stress on the system.
>
>Another thing: using integers as primary keys gives complex queries an inherent speed boost. This alone is enough argument to use surrogates.

A counterargument is that when using surrogate keys, you generally need more joins in a query which slow things down. When having a table with more than one foreign key, intelligent ones actually could give you a tremendous performance advantage.

In one of the other threads Daniel Rouleau has provide such example where performance of might be dreadfull in case of surrogates.

Walter,