I have always, instinctively given an auto-generated unique ID to any table that represents an object: e.g. users, stories, payments etc. Although it can often

I have always, instinctively given an auto-generated unique ID to any table that represents an object: e.g. users, stories, payments etc. Although it can often mean that you end up giving a unique ID to pretty much everything it saves these kind of problems in the long run. My other long-standing trick is to mark things as deleted rather than actually removing them from the database. This allows you to un-delete things. It has saved my ass on a few occasions.