VARCHAR as foreign key/primary key in database good or bad?

Question

Is it better if I use ID nr:s instead of VARCHARS as foreign keys? And is it better to use ID nr:s isntead of VARCHARS as Primary Keys? By ID nr I mean INT!

This is what I have now:

category table:
cat_id ( INT ) (PK)
cat_name (VARCHAR)

category options table:
option_id ( INT ) (PK)
car_id ( INT ) (FK)
option_name ( VARCHAR ) 

I COULD HAVE THIS I THINK:

category table:
cat_name (VARCHAR) (PK)

category options table:
cat_name ( VARCHAR ) (FK)
option_name ( VARCHAR ) ( PK )

Or am I thinking completely wrong here?

Answer 1

The problem with VARCHAR being used for any KEY is that they can hold WHITE SPACE. White space consists of ANY non-screen-readable character, like spaces tabs, carriage returns etc. Using a VARCHAR as a key can make your life difficult when you start to hunt down why tables aren't returning records with extra spaces at the end of their keys.

Sure, you CAN use VARCHAR, but you do have to be very careful with the input and output. They also take up more space and are likely slower when doing a Queries.

Integer types have a small list of 10 characters that are valid, 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. They are a much better solution to use as keys.

You could always use an integer-based key and use VARCHAR as a UNIQUE value if you wanted to have the advantages of faster lookups.

Answer 2

with an int you can store up to 2 billion in 4 bytes with varchars you cannot you need to have 10 bytes or so to store that, if you use varchars there is also a 2 byte overhead

so now you add up the 6 extra bytes in every PK and FK + the 2 byte varchar overhead

Answer 3

There's nothing wrong with either approach, although this question might start the usual argument of which is better: natural or surrogate keys.

If you use CHAR or VARCHAR as a primary key you'll end up using it as a forign key at some point. When it comes down to it, as @astander says, it depends on your data and how you are going to use it.

Answer 4

If you make the category name into the ID you will have a problem if you ever decide to rename a category.

Answer 5

When I'm doing design work I ask myself: have I got anything in this data that I can guarantee is going to be non-NULL, unique, and unchanging? If so that's a candidate to be the primary key. If not, I know I have to generate a key value to use. Assuming, then, that my candidate key happens to be a VARCHAR I then look at the data. Is it reasonably short in length (meaning, say, 20 characters or less)? Or is the VARCHAR field rather long? If it's short it's usable as a key - if it's long, perhaps it's better to not use it as a key (although if it's in consideration for being the primary key I'm probably going to have to index it anyways). At least part of my concern is that the primary key is going to have to be indexed and will perhaps be used as a foreign key from some other table. Comparisons of VARCHAR fields tend to be slower than the comparison of numeric fields (particularly binary numeric fields such as integers) so using a long VARCHAR field as a key may result in slow performance. YMMV.