Integer foreign key types?

[Jean-David Beyer]

Colin Law wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I suppose it is much too late to put in a plea for the foreign keys in 
> the database to be integer types rather than character guids?  I will 
> appologise in advance as no doubt this was discussed ad nauseum long ago.
> I am looking at possibilities for accessing the db via alternative routes
> and some of this would be much easier with integer keys.
> 
I do not understand your question. What stops you from defining a database 
that has integer foreign keys?

I have a database with a table like this:

CREATE TABLE company (
          company_id             INTEGER DEFAULT
                                         nextval('company_company_id_seq')
                                         NOT NULL,
          PRIMARY KEY (company_id)
	) WITHOUT OIDS TABLESPACE stockc;

and all the other tables (except one) are like this:

CREATE TABLE co_name (
          FOREIGN KEY (co_name_company_id) REFERENCES company (company_id)
         ) WITHOUT OIDS TABLESPACE stockd;

(boring other fields and stuff omitted) So almost all my foreign keys are 
integer and work just fine.


Are you referring to a particular database where there is a concept of a 
guid (and not postgreSQL in general)? I do not even remember a datatype of 
character guid. I know only character(n) for fixed-length and character 
varying for variable-length, and text.

Could you be more clear what you are talking about?

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