Dave,
I have never tried what you are doing (INSERTing a new record and supplying
its ID number). When I needed to do that kind of thing, I would use LOAD
with NONUM specified. I believe no numbers are wasted and you can supply any
value you want. Of course, you must not supply a number which has been
used - or in the sequence which will be used.
I have seen problems reported with autonum, some folks even saying they
never use it. I have never seen a problem.
Bill Cook
Kent WA
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Ebert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2001 6:26 AM
Subject: Autonum -- having it both ways
> In a client table I'd like to use autonumber to assign the id numbers.
> However, I'd also like to include the clients from the last two (RBase)
> databases going back about ten years (this for record management
purposes).
>
> Some of our client records may never have been in a database and there is
a
> possiblity that a large number of records may need to be inserted
manually.
>
> My question is will I eventually break autonumber in this way? I don't
> understand what activities may cause RBase to quit autonumbering. I'd had
> (few) problems in the past that I could fix by deleting and recreating the
> autonumber, but I'd like to know if I'm setting myself up.
>
> I've tested inserting numbers manually into an autonumber column and the
> only effect I've seen is that the next autonumber skips ahead of what
would
> normally be assigned.
>
> For instance, if set to increment by 100 I can insert four records and
> insert one record (100, 200, 300, 400, 50) the next autonumber is 600.
This
> is fine, I don't need a rigid sequence -- no one will ever ask me what
> happened to 500.
>
> tia
>
> paranoid Dave
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
