> M> Heck, if you can't tell, how can you expect the guy (Firebird) to

modify

> M> one if it cannot tell which one of the two you got (your two rows in

the

> M> grid) was which box on the shelf?
>
> well, the mouse example is not that wrong. I'd probably expect the guy
> (IBExpert) to use the RDB$DB_KEY to update the record. It's certainly
> what I'll expect FlameRobin to do when it will learn to update rows
> automatically. :-)

I know about RDB$DB_KEY -- but I'm not sure if IBExpert uses it.

Either way, the db_key is a trick that only (and not always) works with
Firebird.

With any SQL-based database, you work with resultsets (or, in my example,
a few boxes take from a shelf (= table) and brought to you). If you do not
have some way to uniquely identify them, you're screwed, db_key or not.

Better have a PK column some way or another.

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - development tool for Firebird and more!
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com
My thoughts:
http://blog.upscene.com/martijn/
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