[AccessD] Autonumber Assigned Immediately

Bruce,

No, the real problem is the misuse of it.

Autonumber is perfect for what it is designed for.
It is the uses that people put to it, like the ones
you listed that make it "suck."  Stop trying to use
it for things it was not designed to do.

Oh, if you want more than one autonumber per table,
try Oracle, you can do it with their "sequence"
definitions.  Though, it is really more like a trigger
that numbers things than an autonumber.

Robert

At 08:54 PM 9/8/2005, you wrote:
>Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2005 10:24:27 +1000
>From: "Bruen, Bruce" <Bruce.Bruen at railcorp.nsw.gov.au>
>Subject: Re: [AccessD] Autonumber Assigned Immediately
>To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving"
>         <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
>Message-ID:
>         <F2BE8EAB3EA585418337B71BCE6F3BF304EC6D at msmet100.rail.nsw.gov.au>
>Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"
>
>The real problem is that you can only have one autonumber field in a
>record - so by convention "we" all now expect it to be used as a
>surrogate key.  I have many, many times needed one or more unique
>identifiers (user visble).  Example, in a test management db I need to
>automagically number a test scenario and also assign a sequential unique
>number to its execution id.  In addition, how many problems could be
>solved by a "grouped" or restartable autonumber.
>Quite frankly AFAIC autonumber sucks for all uses.
>
>bruce