Hi Paul

> As the guy who started this war last week....

I'm glad you start it :). That was a GREAT idea!

> > c) How it should be implemented?
> >
> > The way people use it mostly, in the trigger Before Insert. So, I
> > think this should be implemented as a system trigger. The priority
> > should be Before any definned triggers, so the user can take control
> > of the value.
>
> Not sure I agree, it should be a user trigger with a priority of 100,
> this way the programmer can create and fire other triggers both
> before and after. They could even drop in a replacement trigger if
> they want to do something fancy. Using the field as a quick way to
> get something defined.

I still don't agree with you. I think the best way it's the trigger to fire
ALWAYS before the user triggers. That's the way we use it mostly, and that's
the way we are expecting it to be. The abillity to let that trigger do
something or not it's controled by setting some value before (you can even
set him to some negative value to do that fancy work). I think it's better
to have a rule here, that start to worry about the priority of that trigger.
Changes will be 'exceptions to the rule', and you can control that
exceptions before posting.
Keep it simple.

> Okay, how about we use IDENTITY instead, that would be more
> self-documenting that it's used to identify records. I just said
> AutoInc because some of the stuff I am working on uses Btrieve.

The AUTOGEN suggestion was to remember that it's using a generator. The word
AUTOINC will bring us some problems in the future for users to expect that
numbers to be sequential.

> As for a true series type Auto incrementing field, that would be
> nice, but should probably be implemented as a serial generator,
> that is a generator that guarantees there are no holes in the series,
> we could then use a similar mechanism.
>

I think this is another story. If we are going to speak about it at the same
time, everybody will be confuse. There was already some people in this list
that do not understand your idea, and keep thinking of this new field as a
'AUTOINC' field.
I need in my applications serial sequential fields (invoice numbers, for
example), and I will love to start a new discussion about this. Could you
please delay this new discussion? ;)

Artur Anjos