Reply #54: Your point?

[Viktor Runeberg]

As another professional database developer (MySQL, R:Base, Paradox, etc.) I'm not sure what your point is. A relational database can link tables by any field. When there are large numbers of people listed in a database, it's standard to have their unique identifier be a number, since for instance "John Smith" isn't unique. But in a voting system, where you never see exactly the same name for two different candidates, that's not a design requirement. You can easily "count votes where race = president and candidate = George W. Bush," or, if Bush has a serial number in a candidates table, you can go the long way around and look up the serial number by the name, then count the votes for the candidate with that serial number.

The point is, in database as in most other programming, "there's more than one way to do it."