SQL Antipatterns, Volume 1

Solution: Get Over It

The values in any primary key must be unique and non-null so you can use them to reference individual rows, but that’s the only rule—they don’t have to be consecutive numbers to identify rows.

Numbering Rows

Pseudokey generators return numbers that look almost like row numbers, because they’re monotonically increasing (each successive value is one greater than the preceding value), but this is only a coincidence of their implementation. Generating values in this way is a convenient way to ensure uniqueness.

Don’t confuse row numbers with primary keys. A primary key identifies one row in one table, whereas row numbers identify rows in a result set. Row numbers in a query result set don’t correspond to primary ...