title: Handling Heroku/ClearDB auto Increment primary key strategy
body: <p>With Heroku running ClearDB as the MySQL layer, primary keys are auto-incremented in multiples of 10. So, for example, the first insert could be 4 then 14, 24, 34 etc. I fully accept their reasoning for this, so that's not the issue. </p>
  
  <p>My question is, how do you handle this within your code. For example, let's say I have a <code>status</code> table which consists of 4 rows,</p>
  
  <pre><code>     id | name
       1  | Active
       2  | Retired
       3  | Banned
       4  | Awaiting Mod
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And then within my application I use:</p>
  
  <pre><code>   if($status['id'] == 1){
       //do something
     }else{
       // do something else
     }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Clearly this will break, due to the way the PK's are incremented. What is the best practice for handling situations like these? I cannot, for example, check for a 14 as there's nothing to say the numbering strategy won't change to 12, 22, 32, etc. </p>
  
  <p>Should I be checking by name eg, <code>if($status['name'] == 'Active')</code> or do I add a new column to the table with the <code>int</code>s I require? I know querying by <code>int</code> in SQL is far quicker than by <code>string</code>.</p>
  
  <p>So, what is the <em>normal</em> way to handle this?</p>