Records in a database are represented by a primary key. Because this has very strict requirements of uniqueness, immutability and often even incremental sequences, the values of these primary keys are unintelligible and unmemorable to humans.

However there is almost always a column or a set of columns in a record that users can easily establish as its identity. For example for a person that would be the name, for a car it would be its licence plate number and so on. Even though this column may not be unique its the best one to use when messaging the user, showing or selecting related objects and exporting or importing information.

This concept is captured by the human key pattern in Genio. You define a set of columns as belonging to a human key in sequential order marking them as 1, 2, 3 ... although usually you only need 1 for the vast majority of cases.

Genio will then make use of this definition to do some smart things:

• Error messages about records will use the Human key to inform the user.

• New Lookups to related areas will automatically use the human key fields as the user input field and lookup columns.

• Export and import templates will attempt to match records primarily through the Human Key.