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From:James Harvard Date:December 22 2005 3:08am
Subject:Re: Are primary keys essential?
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Thanks the on & off-list replies, but I obviously didn't explain my situation very
well!

My app is essentially creating summary reports from large amounts of data. It is _not_
doing the actual data warehousing. It's international trade data.

The data tables contain foreign keys for stuff like destination country, trade commodity
category etc., but they are _not_ themselves referenced by any other table. Therefore I
have not yet found, nor do I envisage finding, any use for an arbitrary auto_increment
primary key. So why would/might I need a PK at all?

TIA,
James Harvard
Thread
• Reason for Auto-increment primary keys?Rhino21 Dec
  • Re: Reason for Auto-increment primary keys?Kenneth Wagner21 Dec
    • Re: Reason for Auto-increment primary keys?SGreen21 Dec
      • Re: Reason for Auto-increment primary keys?Rhino21 Dec
        • Re: Reason for Auto-increment primary keys?SGreen22 Dec
      • Re: Reason for Auto-increment primary keys?Kenneth Wagner22 Dec
        • Re: Reason for Auto-increment primary keys?David Griffiths22 Dec
        • Are primary keys essential?James Harvard22 Dec
      • Re: Are primary keys essential?Kenneth Wagner22 Dec
        • Re: Are primary keys essential?James Harvard22 Dec
          • Re: Are primary keys essential?James Harvard22 Dec
      • Re: Are primary keys essential?Kenneth Wagner22 Dec
      • Re: Are primary keys essential?Rhino22 Dec
      • Reporting tools for summary dataC.R.Vegelin22 Dec
        • Re: Reporting tools for summary dataJames Harvard22 Dec
    • Re: Reason for Auto-increment primary keys?Josh Trutwin21 Dec
  • Re: Reason for Auto-increment primary keys?Peter Brawley21 Dec
    • Re: Reason for Auto-increment primary keys?James Harvard22 Dec
  • Re: Reason for Auto-increment primary keys?Rudy Lippan21 Dec
• RE: Are primary keys essential?SST - Adelaide)22 Dec