Re: FN-FORUM: [OT] flippancy - What's the best development platform for creating Web 2.0 business applications?

date posted 22nd November 2007 09:05


> On 22 Nov 2007 01:50:46 -0000, Carrie wrote
> > sorry but Gary's holier than thou stuff is starting to get on my nerves.
>
> Well if I come across as "holier than thou" I appologise. However, stating
> that you shouldn't use an auto-incrementing integer field as a primary key,
> and instead you should *always* use a field natural to the row, is just
> wrong - please tell me I'm not the only person on this entire forum who
> knows that?!
>

I'm not saying that. When did I say that? I said:

"But relying on these as the main tools to describe the relationships in
a database causes lots of people lots of problems - especially unique
incrementing IDs as primary keys."

Which is true.

I thought this was worth pointing out because this approach is, it seems
to me, a recurrent theme in the database problems posted to this group.

It's also the single main problem with the persistence model in Ruby On
Rails, which is where we came in. Look at item one on this list, for
example:

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.309321.3

Graham

> In the future I shall try to express myself in a less "holier than thou" way
> so as not to offend Carrie's sensibilities.
>
> Best regards!
>
> --
> Gary Short
> http://www.garyshort.org
>
>