Do link tables need a meaningless primary key field?

Question

I am working on a couple of link tables and I got to thinking (Danger Will Robinson, Danger) what are the possible structures of a link table and what are their pro\'s and c

Answer 1

The correct answer is:

• Primary key is ('table1fk' , 'table2fk')
• Another index on ('table2fk' , 'table1fk')

Because:

• You don't need an index on table1fk or table2fk alone: the optimiser will use the PK
• You'll most likely use the table "both" ways
• Adding a surrogate key is only needed because of braindead ORMs