CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sqldatabase-designprimary-key
user12110336
user12110336

Reputation:

Primary key requirements

Is it a good idea to store phone number as a primary key on RDBMS? They are unique to nearly all of us. But my friend suggests it is not a good idea because of the following reasons.

What are your insights, please let me know!.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 268

Answers (3)

nvogel
nvogel

Reputation: 25526

A phone number certainly can make sense as a key but all depends on what you need to identify and how you intend to use it. There is no general right or wrong answer.

Three very good criteria (but not absolute rules) for choosing and designing keys are: Simplicity, Stability, Familiarity. Phone numbers are simple and familiar enough for many purposes. Whether they are stable enough is probably highly dependent on circumstances. For example you might require all your employees to supply a unique phone number for third-factor authentication but probably it's quite acceptable to change that number occasionally.

Upvotes: 2

matrik
matrik

Reputation: 114

I'd be against this idea, generally for reasons:

  • It is personally identifiable information and I'd recommend using it with caution if you're bound to GDPR. Some users might ask you to not use their phone numbers. It might later be required to hash or mask part of the phone number, or even completely get rid of it.

  • Value depends on user input even it is validated. There are several services which lend you a phone number for validation if you're not in the target country of the validator.

  • A schema needs to be defined of the phone number if it will contain country code, parentheses or spaces.

  • There should be a validation to prevent duplicates and null values.

In summary it is not a good idea to use a field which has a dependency to external facts. As others mentioned, using an autogenerated identifier for the ID and non-unique index for the phone number seems like a better approach.

Upvotes: 2

Prat
Prat

Reputation: 46

what is the purpose of having phone number as primary key, is it to identify a individual? if so one individual can have multiple phone numbers (mobile/home phone) so it is not advisable to use phone number as primary key. Also your question is right what if a person does not have phone number.

Upvotes: 1

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