[Pulp-dev] 'id' versus 'pulp_id' on Content

[David Davis]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2018 at 4:50 PM, Brian Bouterse <bbouters at redhat.com> wrote:

> Silly question, but could we just call our 'id' 'pk' instead? Since that
> is a fully reserved value in Django for the primary key it seems clearest
> to just use that? What about that?
>

Are you recommending we rename the id field to pk in the database? I’m not
sure if that would work.


>
> On Tue, Jun 12, 2018 at 3:44 PM, Jeff Ortel <jortel at redhat.com> wrote:
>
>> On 06/08/2018 02:57 PM, Brian Bouterse wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> @jortel: We're blocked on your -1 vote expressed for 3704. We have
>>> practical plugin writer issues with the current state. Can you elaborate on
>>> why we shouldn't go forward with https://pulp.plan.io/issues/3704
>>>
>>
>> The 'ID' column is reserved for the primary key and is inappropriate for
>> natural keys.  This is well establish convention and best practice.
>
>
> I don't understand this reasoning. Earlier in the thread we discussed how
> the sources recommending these conventions also mention that if we have a
> practical reason or problem with that convention to do something
> differently. We received complaints on this name about collisions so I
> don't follow how we should still follow the convention.
>
>
>> Plugin writers specify natural keys.  Also, by introducing '_' prefix (or
>> any prefix) means a table could have both 'ID' and '_ID' columns which is
>> especially confusing since the 'ID' column would not be the primary key.
>>
>
> We have two concepts here that are similar, so I think that problem is
> mostly unrelated to this decision. For example, if we leave the names as-is
> we have this problem only now it's named id and errata_id and in addition
> we'll have the problems listed below.
>
>
>> How does naming the natural key for an rpm as 'rpm_id' cause a
>> significant problem for plugin writers?
>>
>
> It's a good question because it's the whole motivation for this change.
> It's not an rpm, it's an erratum which doesn't have nevra like a package.
> It's also the problem from another content type I heard about at Config
> Management Camp.
>
> It causes problems in two ways:
>
> * plugin users (not writers) who are familiar with 'id' as part of the
> erratum data type would then have to also understand this field name
> renaming that Pulp arbitrarily introduces. This could get confusing when
> the user submit a filter with id='ID-2115858' and they find nothing because
> 'id' is matching on the primary key not on the 'id' attribute of the errata
> like they expect. Those users would also be Pulp users so they'll
> understand that _id means the pk.
>

By the same logic, if Pulp users know that id means pk, wouldn’t they
therefore understand that the id is not the erratum id?


>
> * plugins specifically may wrap other tools and now they have to maintain
> mappings as well. This is specifically the case with errata which the data
> model is design to be name-for-name identical to the createrepo_c interface
>
>
Mapping one field to another seems rather minor. Or am I missing something?


>
>> @bmbouters: just curious, where does the rpm 'id' come from and how is it
>> used differently than the NEVREA composite natural key.
>>
>>
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>
>
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