Am 2010-06-22 um 19:06 schrieb Richard S. Russell:

>> Auto-enter serial numbers require special care when updating tables or importing new data. I personally use an otherwise meaningless number, created as an auto-enter calculation:
>> 	uid = GetAsNumber ( GetAsNumber ( Get ( CurrentTimeStamp ) ) & Right ("0000" & Get ( RecordID ) ; 5) )
>> This way I never have to think about that serial number again. There are others, more complicated calculations floating around, but these seem overkill to me.
> 
> I don't see how this works any better for importing data than just using a straight auto-entered serial number. What am I missing?


Richard,

You don't have to take care of the Next Auto-enter value. You can freely import a number of records created on your Laptop (which may hold a copy of your database) without worrying about duplicate serial numbers. You may update accidentally deleted records using a backup with matching IDs, etc.

One possible caveat may be that duplicating a record does NOT create a new serial number. This may be an advantage or disadvantage - it depends...


Winfried