the autoincrement PK on every table is a default that is not required per se to make web2py work, but if you want to use all the features. Generally speaking having a single column value that is able to "pinpoint" a particular row on the table is a big gain on performances and code-readability.
e.g. the grid uses the id to identifying uniquely the record passing it as an argument (as in table/edit/1). or, the db.table(1) shortcut won't work (it translates roughly to db(db.table.id == 1).select().first()) That being said, you can still use the DAL with db(table.pk1 == 'value1')(table.pk2 == 'value2')(table.pk3 == 'value3').select() notation. You can find the relevant details here http://web2py.com/books/default/chapter/29/06#Legacy-databases-and-keyed-tables PS: if you have access to the db, adding an autoincrement field to exploit all the web2py's internals is generally worth the addition of the column. --
