[AccessD] Membership File Changes

 Not sure where were going with this, but a couple of points:

<<Jim, so you have agreed that GUID1 cannot be compared to GUID2 to tease
our
a record's ordinal position>>

  Yes and someone's already pointed out where you'd want to use a GUID
rather then an AN.

<<and you have said that auto number can get
confused and turn negative. >>

  No.  You can as a matter of normal operation, roll over to a negative
value on an AN.  I've never seen anyone do it, yet.  The max value of a long
is quite high and I doubt an app would be able to create that many records
in it's lifetime.   But it is part of the definition/logic of an AN.  If you
reset the seed value of an AN to the max value of a long, the next number
assigned will be negative, thus invalidating your check.

<< No long as the database is not replicated or being
maintained client-side, the connection can be dropped and the record used
until update is required or the next New Record.>>

  While that's true, but the point you miss is that with GUID's, a
connection does not need to be made at all for data entry, replicated or
not.  So in the case were I have records created at various locations, then
merged later, GUID's are a perfect choice.  

  The only other option is to use AN's, then when merging, prefix the key in
some way to indicate the source.   That works pretty well actually and you
get better performance then a GUID, but then your stuck managing the process
and open the door to possibly making a mistake.

<<I cannot think of a database project yet where I was not
concerned with sorting records in a recordset that included all records
posted on or before a certain record, or on or after a certain record, and
datetime is not a good predictor. I have seen that field
hand-entered/overridden after-the-fact. >>

 I certainly would not be relying on an AN field for that.  You should have
an entry date/time and a transaction date/time.  The first never being
allowed to change.

Jim.
-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Bill Benson
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2014 09:00 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Membership File Changes

Jim, so you have agreed that GUID1 cannot be compared to GUID2 to tease our
a record's ordinal position and you have said that auto number can get
<<snip>>