The web is a total shit show, but if you can provide a single example of an established website which will cause a dev any real grief because you enter [object Object] into a form I’ll send you $100.00.

Removed by mod

I think a lot of comments here miss the mark, it’s not really just about stating the gov does not use SQL or speculation regarding keys.

Deduplication is generally part of a compression strategy and has nothing to do with SQL. If we’re being generous he may have been talking about normalization, but no one I have ever met has confused the two terms (they are distinctly different from an engineering perspective).

There are degrees of normalization too, so it may make total sense to normalize 3NF (third normal form) rather than say 6NF depending on the data.

I’m sure he has an alternative, like tattooing it on the forearms of ‘undesirables’.