Thanks for all the replies.
I like to try to stay with the current way of doing things.

However I have no idea what surrogate keys are. Unique ID's
well the name tells it all. I also presume that unique ID's
are char fields or can it be integers ?

As Helen guessed correctly I did use the examples from
Borland.

Would Database Design for mere mortals be a good book
to teach me some/all of these priniciples ?

Nando Dessena wrote:

> Gerhardus,
>
>
>> You mentioned that this method is maybe obsolete. Can you tell me what
>> the new way of doing this is.
>
>
> Surrogate keys and unique IDs; no composite keys.
>
>
>> Or the correct way in firebird/ib to do
>> this without performance degradence.
>
>
> With IB it is more healthy to avoid defining foreign keys on low
> selectivity columns; it depends on the nature of your m/d relationship.
> I'd tend to use one in your case.
> Ciao