I'm working as a "guest" dev at a random company.
I'm working with a table that does not have a primary key by definition(Oracle).
The column named "SOMETHING_ID" is varchar2(10) and constructed at insert time by the following operation. And it is used as a primary key and referenced by other tables.
'A_STRING' || LPAD(SEQUENCE_NAME.NEXTVAL, 7, '0')
Some examples of the primary key data are
CH-00004321
CH-00004322
CH-00004323
My questions are,
first, in what circumstances would it be justified to use a primary key that is a combination of the type of the record(let's say, CH for Chinese food, In for Indian and MX for Mexican) and a sequence number ?
Second, in what circumstances would it be justified not to have a primary key defined but you have a column that distinctively distinguish each row ?
Third, is my perception correct that I see the combination of the type string(CH, IN, MX) and a sequence number is against the 1st normalisation ?
Fourth, in the table, there is only one "type string" value (let's say CH). Is it okay to add that string to the pk while it does not seem necessary since there is only one value ? (The nature of the table does not seem to allow any other value for the type string though unlike my example of food. Perhaps you can see the table name as "CHINESE_FOOD", hence no other type string value would seem logical.)
Note - 1. Actual column, sequence names are replaced with arbitrary names.
2. The aim of this software is prediction of the damages caused by natural disasters.