Should I design a table with a primary key of varchar or int?

Question

I know this is subjective, but I\'d like to know peoples opinions and hopefully some best practices that I can apply when designing sql server table structures.

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Answer 1

Keeping in mind that this is quite old a question, I still want to make the case for using varchar with surrogate keys fur future readers:

1. An environment with several replicated machines
2. Scenarios where it is required that the ID of a to be inserted row is known before it is actually inserted (i.e., the client assigns this ID, not the database)