You need to be aware of the tradeoffs, though. For example, adding an alias in your example could easily result in a lost update: if two users add an alias at t

You need to be aware of the tradeoffs, though. For example, adding an alias in your example could easily result in a lost update: if two users add an alias at the same time the second write will overwrite the first. You can go up an isolation level or check it in your application (do an `UPDATE ... WHERE` then check it went through), of course, but with relational tables you get this for free without any worry or performance impact.