> If you use identity as a primary key AND records may be
> deleted along the way thus leaving "gaps" AND you ever
> have to rebuild your database (not restore from backups)
> THEN you MAY be totally SOL. The reinsertion of the rows
> can cause the Identity column to be corrupt with respect
> to what the original IDS were.
In short, if I understand you correctly, what you're saying boils down to
the fact that if you don't backup the values in the identity columns, you'll
lose your relationships between entities. This is true.
Of course, this assumes that you'd be perfectly OK if you lost your
database, and didn't have a backup of it anyway. For most of us, this is
false, as we don't have a copy of all the data that went into it in the
first place. In a transactional system, more data is going in all the time,
and if we're not backing that up somehow, we're in trouble. If we are
backing it up, or exporting it, we'll need to export the value in the
identity column as well as the other values.
That's a price I can live with. Of course, it's a free country, and you're
certainly free to not use identity columns, and that doesn't mean you're
wrong and I'm right. Personally, though, you haven't convinced me to stop
using them myself. There is also, admittedly, a bit of a "religious war"
aspect with this topic, but I generally pride myself on not having opinions
that I can't rationally justify. (Although, I'm probably as wrong about this
as every other "true believer" is.)
Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software
http://www.figleaf.com/
voice: (202) 797-5496
fax: (202) 797-5444
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