… That’s what I said, you’d just update the row, i.e. replace the existing data, i.e. overwrite what’s already there

u were talking about not keeping historical data, which is one of the proposed reasons you would have “duplicate” entries, i was just clarifying that.

… I don’t think you understand how modern databases are designed

it’s my understanding that when it comes to storing data that it shouldn’t be possible to have two independent stores of the exact same thing, in two separate places, you could have duplicate data entries, but that’s irrelevant to the discussion of de-duplication aside from data consolidation. Which i don’t imagine is an intended usecase for a DB. Considering that you literally already have one identical entry. Of course you could simply make it non identical, that goes without saying.

Also, we’re talking about the DB used for the social security database, not fucking tigerbeetle.