Relational database design question - Surrogate-key or Natural-key?

Question

Which one is the best practice and Why?

a) Type Table, Surrogate/Artificial Key

Foreign key is from user.type to type.i

Answer 1

Use natural keys whenever they work. Names usually don't work. They are too mutable.

If you are inventing your own data, you might as well invent a syntheic key. If you are building a database of data provided by other people or their software, analyze the source data to see how they identify things that need identification.

If they are managing data at all well, they will have natural keys that work for the important stuff. For the unimportant stuff, suit yourself.