What database are you using? In all my tables in all applications I always assign an automatically generated numerical primary key. Even if I don't figure I'll use it, sometime in the future I might. These keys can be used for relational links and should have nothing to do with your actual data. If you want to search on names, etc, create an index for that column. And unless you intend to have a large database you can use the same generator for all your tables, no one ever sees these columns anyway in most cases.