>I take STRONG exception.

> I have tables with membership ID numbers and when I used autoincrment
>field, the organization was always complaining
>about not having sequentail and realistic membership numbers.

>This is a very good good way to generate the record Id's.

I understand your position. I used to do the same kinds of things. I have more recently come to the opinion that table primary keys should be internally-generated with no usage outside the database. If a customer wanted their own "external" user IDs, I would likely do something similar to the example given, although the user ID would not be the primary key: I would make an internal primary key on which the database integrity is based. I would also make certain that no user-interaction takes place between the assignment of the user ID and the commit, precisely to avoid the problem reported.

All that is, of course, just my own opinion, and I know that some will not agree. That's ok, I'm delighted to hear their reasoning, because I almost always learn something from listening.

Thanks for your comments,

Best regards,
Dan.