Just to add my £0.02 worth. I totally endorse all Andrew has said. I have
faced a similar requirement and situation re software and non-design. I've
altered tables to add primary keys where I had a unique index (1 index out
of 3000 !!) and converted other indexes where appropriate to be unique.
Performance has actually improved slightly.
The only downside is we have had the occasional failure where the code isn't
strong enough and attempts to insert a duplicate. When this happens we bug
the software and point out the error of their ways.

Keith

-> -----Original Message-----
-> From: Andrew Hamm [mailto:ahamm@mail.com]
-> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 4:22 AM
-> To: informix-list@iiug.org
-> Subject: Re: Enterprise Replication - Primary Key
->
->
-> Francisco Roldan wrote:
-> > [SNIP] but i am not in charge of the software application that
-> > runs on my server, I am just the DBA, so the application
-> > administrator refuse to define primary keys and the effect of the
-> > primary keys on the software-application could be very bad ( What
-> > a great software right? ), at least in a short period of time.
->
-> This adminstrator needs to know that IF they have a unique
-> index on a table,
-> then they already have a primary key. The only difference is
-> that a PRIMARY
-> KEY definition also implicitly adds (in effect) a NOT NULL
-> clause to all
-> fields of the primary key. However, "proper design" rarely
-> allows NULL
-> fields in the key so it's highly likely that the data
-> already satisfies this
-> rule.
< MUCH GOOD STUFF SNIPPED >
->


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