Re: Localized Tables

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And if the articles are in fact generated internally and are not published via a standards authority should he not use an internal surrogate key, rather than one imposed by an external authority? <<

The definition of a surrogate key is that it is generated in the DB
and never exposed to the users (think indexing and hashing). I think
you meant an artificial key internal to the company. And I would
still talk to a librarian or forms control officer about a well-
defined document numbering system

(The ISSN is merely a composite surrogate key, in that only part of the number has independent meaning, the rest is just a counter, much like an EAN 13 barcode....) <<

The ISSN is a global industry standard, and it has a defining
authority with external verification and validation rules. Nothing
like a surrogate at all.

Take a look at company manuals these days. A lot of them have gone
away from the company internal artificial key to at least add an ISSN
and ISBN as an alternate key so that they can be put in public
libraries and databases.


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