Other attribute forms
Attributes may have more forms than just an ID or a name. More often than not you'll find long descriptions, SKUs, Social Security Numbers, previous companies' codes still in use, and so on. Or, in the case of a customer, you may have an e-mail address that sometimes you want to use in a report. Those descriptive fields that uniquely refer to an element of an attribute can be used as alternate forms. When creating an alternate form, it is always useful to ask the question: is this a form or a totally different attribute? The customer's birthday, for example, would be a different attribute, since we may later filter or GROUP BY this column; and surely does not uniquely identify a single customer.
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