[AccessD] Cross referencing records - ideas

Hi List,


I'm looking for ideas.  I have an application that involves fairly
simplistic action history tracing, so simple it is done by a memo field.
That is, the yewsers completes a textbox for an action and when they
save/exit the contents of the textbox are appended with a timestamp to
the memo field.  Works completely fine for the need.

I have been asked whether it would be possible to do the same thing for
the "occasional" need to cross reference rows in the master table.  They
would like to include a note of the ilk "See also job card xxxxxx".  

Simple! Except... There is no readily available natural key for the job
card. Depending on the situation the natural key is nearly all the card!
I don't want to use or expose the surrogate key for all those good
reasons.  

My initial reaction is to include a realtionship table that would be
used to hold "Related Job Cards" and build a popup based "Link to Card"
form and a popup based "See related Cards" form to support this.
However, I don't think the usage warrants the expense.

Has anyone had a similar experience and found an inexpensive answer?

Tia
Bruce