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Asked: 2026-05-10T15:46:21+00:00

I’m just wondering what the optimal solution is here. Say I have a normalized

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I’m just wondering what the optimal solution is here.

Say I have a normalized database. The primary key of the whole system is a varchar. What I’m wondering is should I relate this varchar to an int for normalization or leave it? It’s simpler to leave as a varchar, but it might be more optimal

For instance I can have

People ====================== name      varchar(10)    DoB       DateTime     Height    int    Phone_Number ====================== name      varchar(10)    number    varchar(15)

Or I could have

People ====================== id        int Identity    name      varchar(10)    DoB       DateTime   Height    int    Phone_Number ====================== id        int    number    varchar(15)

Add several other one-to-many relationships of course.

What do you all think? Which is better and why?

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1 Answer

  1. Can you really use names as primary keys? Isn’t there a high risk of several people with the same name?

    If you really are so lucky that your name attribute can be used as primary key, then – by all means – use that. Often, though, you will have to make something up, like a customer_id, etc.

    And finally: ‘NAME’ is a reserved word in at least one DBMS, so consider using something else, e.g. fullname.

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