Posted by pb648174 on 10/01/31 11:42

I think we are getting a little off topic from the original discussion,
but I was thinking that you guys were saying to not use the identity at
all, or to maybe only use it as a secondary method of getting at the
data. But so far, you have proposed making the identity the primary key
(which it is), using it as the foreign key (which it is) and putting a
unique constraint on things that you wish to enforce uniqueness for
(which I already do).

The numbering issue is just not a problem, when users need their own
numbers we just let them type them in. 99% of the time we don't let
users see the identity values, but every now and then we do, such as
User Ids, just so we have a quick way to talk about a particular thing.
Almost all of our tables have an identity as the primary key or some
combination thereof and so far I haven't heard any reason not to do
that. You are just saying to also put a UNIQUE constraint on the
columns that need to be unique... not a problem.

My main point was just trying to determine how set you were on the
evilness of the identity column and so far what you are saying to do is
what we are currently doing...

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