Database Design Primay Key, ID vs String

Posted by LnDCobra on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by LnDCobra
Published on 2010-03-31T09:33:03Z Indexed on 2010/03/31 9:43 UTC
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Hi, I am currently planning to develop a music streaming application. And i am wondering what would be better as a primary key in my tables on the server. An ID int or a Unique String.

Methods 1:

Songs Table: SongID(int), Title(string), Artist*(string), Length(int), Album*(string)

Genre Table Genre(string), Name(string)

SongGenre: SongID*(int), Genre*(string)

Method 2

Songs Table: SongID(int), Title(string), ArtistID*(int), Length(int), AlbumID*(int)

Genre Table GenreID(int), Name(string)

SongGenre: SongID*(int), GenreID*(int)

Key: Bold = Primary Key, Field* = Foreign Key

I'm currently designing using method 2 as I believe it will speed up lookup performance and use less space as an int takes a lot less space then a string.

Is there any reason this isn't a good idea? Is there anything I should be aware of?

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