[thelist] Asking for email address twice

Barney Carroll barney.carroll at gmail.com
Thu Jan 22 09:52:46 CST 2009


In passing: @Ron, that's the best argument against email address as user ID
I've ever read. Thanks a lot.



Regards,
Barney Carroll
Web designer & front-end developer

t: +44 (0) 7594 506 381


2009/1/22 Luther, Ron <Ron.Luther at hp.com>

> The estimable Mr. r937 asked:
>
> > don't make email address the primary key in your valid user table.]
> >>whyever not?  because it might change? what's wrong with updating a
> primary key?
>
>
> Hi Rudy,
>
> Rats.  Once again, my words may not have precisely captured my intent!
>  You're quite right.  I don't have a problem with updating primary keys.
>  But then again, I also happen to know that you and Matt are both familiar
> with and comfortable using composite and compound primary keys.
>
> So let me try again.  I was attempting to recommend against the use of
> email address as a simple unique key in systems where folks intend to use
> that email address as-if-it-were an 'account number' or 'global id'.  I have
> two reasons why I think that's a bad idea, but mostly I recommend against it
> because I like to keep things simple!  ;-)
>
> The first reason is non-technical.  I've gone through several corporate
> mergers where my work email address has been forcibly changed from '
> Ron at smallcompany.com' to 'RonNumberSix at ReallyBigCompany.com'.  [1]  Those
> changes generally happen over a weekend, and with no advance notice.
>  Because of that, I actually _have_ had to argue on the phone with helpful
> customer service representatives telling me that they would be more than
> happy to change my email address in their records for me ... and
> "ALL-I-Have-To-Do" is send them an email from my old 'Ron at smallcompany.com'
> account requesting that change.  (So they can be sure it's really truly me
> and not some lowlife identify thief.  You understand.)
>
> @#&*!
>
> "Sorry Sir, that's corporate policy.  Is there anything else I can help you
> with?"
>
> Now I can't *prove* that those folks were using email address as an account
> number.  Maybe they weren't.  It smells that way to me, but I could be
> misspeaking here.  These kinds of helpful 'corporate security policies' may
> or may not have technological underpinnings.  But on the other hand, storage
> is cheap.  There really isn't any reason not to set up separate Account_NBR,
> and Email_Addr_1 thru Email_Addr_n fields.  My thinking was that the
> separation of account_id from email_address *should* make it simpler to
> design systems that prevent issues like the above from becoming end user
> usability problems.  It's no guarantee, but I think it's a step in the right
> direction.
>
> [Granted, in a B2B setting you may sometimes need to also construct and
> maintain a hierarchy of account_ids in order to properly relate and
> aggregate disparate divisions or subsidiaries of the same customer ... and
> when one of your customer companies sells one of their subsidiaries to
> another company that is also a customer of yours ... well ... it can be
> great good fun keeping your historical records in order!  {Particularly when
> that subsidiary has a multi-year purchase contract with you and those years
> cross this change boundary!  Unbounded loveliness!} ... But that's peeking
> ahead.]
>
>
>
> Reason #2.  Scope.  When you have complete end-to-end control over the
> system architecture and implementation - sure - you can set it up any way
> you want and make it work.  Absolut-a-tively.  I agree 103.5%.  But you
> don't always have that kind of control.  Sometimes your MySQL web storefront
> is feeding an SAP order management system that is driving data through a JD
> Edwards MRP engine that is outbounding information to Peoplesoft Financials
> and a hundred downstream reporting systems using a multitude of technologies
> and archiving strategies.  In that situation the update cascade doesn't
> quite reach into those archived mag tapes three or four system hops removed
> from your frontend.
>
> ... and then Accounting (or Legal) (or Regulatory) (or Customs) (or
> Homeland Security) (etc) goes to one of those downstream system and demands
> x years of historical data on some customer ...
>
> Sorry.  I'm chicken.  I'm not going to paint a target on my chest by
> doinking with changes to customer account id values in the frontend system
> (or anywhere else in the chain).  Especially without knowing how it's going
> to play through the rest of the world.  Nope.  Not worth it.  So yes, I will
> update a primary key.  But no, I'm going to be extremely wary and
> conservative futzing about with customer account ids and not change them at
> all unless it's both absolutely necessary and very very well documented and
> signed off on. [Mergers are one situation where sometimes you need to do
> this ... But you still need to be weawwy weawwy carefuw.]
>
>
>
> We have some seasoned veterans here on thelist, but we also have some
> rookies.  Someone setting up their first 'customer' table and establishing a
> 'unique key field' could easily be tempted to use email address.  ... Hey!
>  An email address is unique, right?  I'll use that!  What could possibly go
> wrong?  ... I probably should have been a bit more verbose earlier, but my
> intent was to recommend not using email address to uniquely identify your
> customers.  Whew!  Hope that's clear now.  ;-)
>
>
>
> Cheers,
> RonL.
>
> (Who is still a member of and, once in a while, receives email threads from
> a technical Yahoo group {because of some crazy forwarding rules somewhere
> evidently} ... but can no longer contribute to the discussion in those
> threads - or even unsubscribe - because his email address changed. [Don'tcha
> love non-moderated discussion lists?])
>
> [1] More a nod to The Prisoner than Battlestar Galactica actually.
> --
>
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