<< I can't resist chiming in even though I'm probably way out of my league. If I understand you, the custno is a sort of combo field that includes an id # plus a ".1" which identifies a location? If that's correct, then they're using the "tens" decimal value to represent a location? Seems way far out and wrong way to do that.
>> Well, I wouldn't set it up this way myself. I'd do it as you described. However, it's the very foundation of the a huge system that's been running for two decades, and there's no possible business case to be made for changing it now. And, to be honest, although I'd be inclined to do it with two integer columns myself, the way it's set up (with one real column) is perfect for this particular application. There's no downside. It allows users to search for locations by typing into a single field, not two, and still allows indexed searches across all locations for a single customer number. Even yesterday, when the display was temporarily not what people were expecting, the application itself did not fail. So even if I had the opportunity to change it now, I wouldn't. -- Larry
