Re: model for legacy table without primary key

You could just define some arbitrary column as primary key. Primary
key doesn't play any important part in most select queries. It might
be that some queries would break (like Django trying to group by the
fake PK column when aggregating), but most things should just work.
This is what I have done when using some views which do not have
natural single column primary key. Try and see if this works for your
usage.

- Anssi

On Dec 30, 6:50 pm, "Sells, Fred" <fred.se...@adventistcare.org>
wrote:
> I thought I had read somewhere that it was possible to have a model for
> a legacy table without a primary key as long as the useage was read only
> and that the method was "filter" and not "get".  I've been searching for
> quite a while now and all I can find indicates a primary key is
> mandatory for any model.  I'm using Django 1.3 with MySQL 5.0 but plan
> to upgrade to MySQL 5.5 if that makes any difference.
>
> The table has 4 fields that are unique together: userid, application,
> role, facility.  I populate the latter 3 by decoding the ldap group.
> Unfortunately ldap group names are not defined consistently, so I have
> to write a special parser for each application (that I support in
> Django).  This table will be refreshed using MySQLdb from a cron job
> that queries ldap (i.e. no Django at this phase).  This  process updates
> a generic access table that is used by all my django apps.
>
> I control this table, so I could let Django create an autonumber id as
> primary key, or I could combine all 4 columns to create a  primary key.
> Since I really don't need or have a good use for a primary key in this
> table, either technique seems inappropriate.  However if I'm being anal
> about this whole pk issue and need to just  bite the bullet, so be it.
>
> Any sage advice?
>
> Fred.

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