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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-15T13:57:14+00:00

Let’s say I need a simple table with account id and no other information.

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Let’s say I need a simple table with account id and no other information. There are two ways to do it:

id varchar(255) PRIMARY KEY

Or to add a numeric primary key:

id int PRIMARY KEY
accountId varchar(255) UNIQUE NOT NULL

What are the advantages / disadvantages of both approaches and which one would you choose and why?

What implications does the first solution has to maintainability (what if we need to change the id for a single row) and for performance?

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  1. Editorial Team

    This boils down to the surrogate key versus natural key debate in the database world. See for example here, here and here for texts on the topic. I think both choices are valid, but in this case I would choose the AccountID as a natural key (given that the AccountID is unique for each account, will not be null, and will not be subject to changes), because it means less overhead. In this case, I do not see added value to a surrogate key.

    Natural keys:

    • have meaning for the user
    • are hard to change when needed
    • may lead to needing less joins in queries

    Surrogate keys:

    • don’t mean anything to the user
    • are not subject to changes
    • may lead to needing more joins in queries
    • may require extra or larger indexes
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