Almost every time I picked a natural key I have regretted it in the long run. Requirements change, or index sizes get bloated and hamper performance, or you ne

Almost every time I picked a natural key I have regretted it in the long run. Requirements change, or index sizes get bloated and hamper performance, or you need a nice, short ID for URLs , or foreign keys get more complicated with compound primary keys, or ... Natural keys are nice in theory, but not so much in practice. Especially if we are talking about active databases where large migrations are a burden.